Keywords, Images and SEO
A quick and easy trick to help in your SEO efforts involves Keywords and Images. I’m sure, if you’ve spent 5 minutes researching SEO, you’ve come across the buzzword Keywords, but in case you haven’t, I’ll do a quick explanation. If you have, skip down a few paragraphs, or review, who am I to tell you what to do.
Plain and simple, a keyword on a webpage is what the page is about. So if you have a page about a shoe you’re selling, shoe would be a good starting point for your keyword. Now I don’t suggest using just the word ‘shoe’ as your keyword, there are over 700 million search results for shoe in Google alone. You should pick a Keyword Phrase or Key Phrase.
A Key Phrase is a short phrase that describes what your page is about. So rather than shoe, try to be more descriptive, like, Red Leather High Heel Shoe. This is more descriptive of the product you are offering, and there are only 300,000 search results!
So, keeping that knowledge in mind and keeping with the example above, a quick and easy trick to help in your SEO efforts with your images is to use these Key Phrases and Keywords whenever you can. I’m not suggesting that you spam your page, but whenever the words can be used, use them.
For example, lets assume you have an image of your red shoe. Rename the image to ‘red-leather-high-heel-shoe.jpg’, and if you know you’re going to have many of them, throw a number or SKU at the end of the file. If you have hundreds of images on your site, this may take a while, but it’s well worth the work. Not only because it may help your SEO efforts, but also it could possibly keep you more organized.
Lets look at an example of the final code you would use to add the image to your page:
<img src="red-leather-high-heel-shoe_12345.jpg" alt="Red Leather High Heel Shoe" />
WOW! A completely SEO friendly image. No, this wont take the place of a good block of text, but it may help boost your SEO ranking up just touch more. And don’t forget to add an image caption, which can be another area to add your Keywords or Phrases.
OK HTML 5 junkies – I haven’t forgotten about you. Let’s start with the code:
<figure>
<img src="red-leather-high-heel-shoe_12345.jpg" alt="Red Leather High Heel Show" />
<figcaption>A Red Leather High Heel Shoe</figcaption>
</figure>
BOOM! Quick and easy SEO Friendly image with a Key Phrase caption, and because of the new figure tag, it’s also telling the bots that this is ‘stand-alone content’ and everything within the figure tag should be grouped together. But keep in mind, HTML 5 may not work everywhere, meaning, you may put it into your code with good intentions, but that doesn't mean every browser will see it. So, use with care.
I hope you found this information useful, and if there are any other topics you’d like us to explain further, please let us know.
