Five quick tips for optimizing images for search engines

Next to contextual search (i.e. just a plain 'regular' search on a search engine) Image Search is the fastest growing vertical search. Compared to shopping, news, blogging, etc., image search has them beat by a mile. However, what's even more important about image search, is how Google's Universal Search, Ask's 3d Search and Yahoo's Blended Search are utilizing and incorporating images from each of their image search verticals into the 'regular' search results.

No longer are images appearing as just three images at the top of a results page. Soon you'll see images incorporated in a lot of different ways including: images coming up with news boxes, and with descriptions of videos, or even as a group of images at the bottom of a page, as opposed to the top of the page.

Here are five tips to make sure you're optimizing your site's images for the search engines:

Robots.txt file: Ensure that the folder you are storing your images in is not blocked by your robots.txt file. Prior to the rise in popularity of image search, it was common practice to block the folder images were stored in. Helpful hint: Store your navigational and "structural" type graphics in one folder, and block that from the spiders, store the pictures of products, events, or news related images in another folder and open that one to the spiders.

Image file names: Name your images in a way that describes what they are. Don't get carried away though. If it's a picture of a purple widget, name it purple-widget.jpg, rather than leaving it whatever your camera or photo editing software wants to name it. Helpful hint: Use dashes between the words, rather than underscores.

Use the Alt Attribute of the IMG tag: Make sure you are using the "alt" attribute of the image tag. Again, like the image name, don't over do it, but ensure that it describes the image you are trying to present to the user. The attribute should describe the image in a short "to the point" way that reads naturally to the viewer. Helpful hint: Utilizing the alt attribute also helps visitors who do not run with images on, as well as visitors with disabilities that utilize screen readers to understand what the web page is about.

Use a caption: Placing a small caption directly under, on top or on the side of your image will help cue the search engines to what the image is about. Helpful hint: With a caption, you can be a little more descriptive about the picture than with the alt attribute, but again, make it flow naturally.

Include images with articles: If you are sending out an article or a press release, don't forget to include an image, or the url to an image, that the news outlets can utilize. By supplying the link to the image, it can encourage them to link to the image itself — straight from your own website. Helpful hint: Adding images to articles and press releases makes them more appealing to the reader.