Cricket,

It seems that more and more people are using Image Search tools in Google and Yahoo (and others). I have done a lot of reading about how to optimize your images & pages to increase your image search ranking. At one point, typical keyword searches in Google Image search were finding and ranking images from our website. They were coming up on the 1st page of results.

Then, about 6 months ago (or so) Google made some kind of change. All I can figure is it was the addition of the “safe search” mode, and we disappeared from the image search results. However, NONE of our images should be considered unsafe for kids.

In the interim, I’ve been optimizing our images (which are many) to reflect all the suggestions I’ve come across to enhance your image search rankings. It’s been a few months, and the results have yet to be seen. I do use the Google Site Map utilities to get the site indexed on a regular basis, but this has had absolutely no effect on the image search rankings.

I joined this class to brush up on the latest and greatest SEO techniques (which is great, thank you!), but in reviewing the course content, I see very little about how to effectively optimize for image searches specifically.

Do you have any good suggestions for image search optimization & how & why you get ranked? (We place very well on the organic keyword searches for sites).

Linda Levy, California
West Coast Weather Vanes

Hi Linda!

This one is actually a bit easier than you might imagine. Just use the keyword in the image file name, alt attribute, picture caption, and somewhere in the content surrounding the image.

If it seems that your images are disappearing from the results when search preferences are configured to safe search, you may want to add a meta tag in the head of your pages to declare the rating (either general or safe for kids) for your site.

<meta name="rating" content="General">

<meta name="rating" content="Safe For Kids">

Google Image Labeler ( a new beta service) really seems to be improving the relevance of image search results within Google images, so hopefully you will be seeing this improvement for your own pictures soon! As you have already noticed, it takes a bit longer to see changes in image search results, as they do not seem to be updated nearly as often as regular search results.

I WILL DEFINITELY SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

Ask Cricket Small Business Marketing Consultant and SEO Training Specialist
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