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Friday, December 15, 2006
We all had a great time at
SES Chicago
last week, answering questions and getting feedback. One of the sessions I participated in was
Images and Search Engines,
and the panelists had great information about using images on your site, as well as on optimizing
for Google Image search.
Ensuring visitors and search engines know what your content is about
Images on a site are great—but search engines can't read them, and not all visitors can.
Make sure your site is accessible and can be understood by visitors viewing your site with images
turned off in their browsers, on mobile devices, and with screen readers. If you do that, search
engines won't have any trouble. Some things that you can do to ensure this:
Don't put the bulk of your text in images. It may sound simple, but the best thing you can do
is to put your text into well, text. Reserve images for graphical elements. If all of the text
on your page is in an image, it becomes inaccessible.
Take advantage of alt tags for all of your images. Make sure the alt text is descriptive and
unique. For instance, alt text such as "picture1" or "logo" doesn't provide much information
about the image. "Charting the path of stock x" and "Company Y" give more details.
Don't overload your alt text. Be descriptive, but don't stuff it with extra keywords.
It's important to use alt text for any image on your pages, but if your company name,
navigation, or other major elements of your pages are in images, alt text becomes especially
important. Consider moving vital details to text to ensure all visitors can view them.
Look at the image-to-text ratio on your page. How much text do you have? One way of looking at
this is to look at your site with images turned off in your browser. What content can you see?
Is the intent of your site obvious? Do the pages convey your message effectively?
Taking advantage of Image search
The panelists pointed out that shoppers often use Image search to see the things they want to buy.
If you have a retail site, make sure that you have images of your products (and that they can be
easily identified with alt text, headings, and textual descriptions). Searchers can then find your
images and get to your site.
One thing that can help your images be returned for results in Google Image search is opting in to
enhanced image search
in Webmaster Tools. This enables us to use your images in the
Google Image Labeler,
which harnesses the power of the community for adding metadata to your images.
Someone asked if we have a maximum number of images per site that we accept for the Image Labeler.
We don't. You can opt in no matter how many, or how few, images your site has.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eOptimize images for accessibility and search engines by using descriptive alt text and avoiding placing the bulk of text within images.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eLeverage Google Image Search to drive traffic to retail sites by ensuring product images are easily identifiable with alt text, headings, and descriptions.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eOpt in to enhanced image search in Google Webmaster Tools to allow community labeling and improve image metadata.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eEnsure your website is accessible to all users, including those with images turned off, by prioritizing text-based content for crucial information.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["The blog post discusses optimizing images for search engines and accessibility. Key actions include using descriptive and unique alt text for all images, avoiding text-heavy images, and ensuring the site's core message is conveyed even with images turned off. Retail sites should include product images with alt text. Opting into enhanced image search in Webmaster Tools is suggested to leverage Google Image Labeler. There's no limit to the number of images a site can include.\n"],null,["# SES Chicago - Using Images\n\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore).\n\nFriday, December 15, 2006\n\n\nWe all had a great time at\n[SES Chicago](https://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/chicago06/glance)\nlast week, answering questions and getting feedback. One of the sessions I participated in was\n[Images and Search Engines](https://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/chicago06/agenda3.html#images),\nand the panelists had great information about using images on your site, as well as on optimizing\nfor Google Image search.\n\nEnsuring visitors and search engines know what your content is about\n--------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\nImages on a site are great---but search engines can't read them, and not all visitors can.\nMake sure your site is accessible and can be understood by visitors viewing your site with images\nturned off in their browsers, on mobile devices, and with screen readers. If you do that, search\nengines won't have any trouble. Some things that you can do to ensure this:\n\n- Don't put the bulk of your text in images. It may sound simple, but the best thing you can do is to put your text into well, text. Reserve images for graphical elements. If all of the text on your page is in an image, it becomes inaccessible.\n- Take advantage of alt tags for all of your images. Make sure the alt text is descriptive and unique. For instance, alt text such as \"picture1\" or \"logo\" doesn't provide much information about the image. \"Charting the path of stock x\" and \"Company Y\" give more details.\n- Don't overload your alt text. Be descriptive, but don't stuff it with extra keywords.\n- It's important to use alt text for any image on your pages, but if your company name, navigation, or other major elements of your pages are in images, alt text becomes especially important. Consider moving vital details to text to ensure all visitors can view them.\n- Look at the image-to-text ratio on your page. How much text do you have? One way of looking at this is to look at your site with images turned off in your browser. What content can you see? Is the intent of your site obvious? Do the pages convey your message effectively?\n\nTaking advantage of Image search\n--------------------------------\n\n\nThe panelists pointed out that shoppers often use Image search to see the things they want to buy.\nIf you have a retail site, make sure that you have images of your products (and that they can be\neasily identified with alt text, headings, and textual descriptions). Searchers can then find your\nimages and get to your site.\n\n\nOne thing that can help your images be returned for results in Google Image search is opting in to\n[enhanced image search](https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=48367)\nin Webmaster Tools. This enables us to use your images in the\n[Google Image Labeler](https://images.google.com/imagelabeler/),\nwhich harnesses the power of the community for adding metadata to your images.\n\n\nSomeone asked if we have a maximum number of images per site that we accept for the Image Labeler.\nWe don't. You can opt in no matter how many, or how few, images your site has.\n| **Update:** [More information on using images](/search/docs/appearance/google-images) can be found in our Help Center."]]
