Search engine visibility for your site is greatly improved for local search results by optimizing your images, especially given Google’s and Yahoo’s implementation of universal search.

Beyond aesthetics, images cause a viewer to linger, particularly if your product has a community of “passionate users” (a label applied to those consumers whose enthusiasm often culminates in vibrant online communities) that you want to attract.

A local bike retailer invites their readers to send in their bicycling images. Located near a regionally famous bike trail, this retailer stands to benefit greatly from the traffic generated from searches for that bike trail alone. Many of the images he has received are of local and visiting biking enthusiasts who regularly ride that trail.

I will save for a later post the many marketing opportunities this retailer has yet to exploit, such as the absence of blog marketing and RSS publishing and videocasts, all of which would serve this particular community of users well. Given that the site offers a great deal of relevant content, it is almost a disservice to fail to deliver it as optimized blog content.

Concentrating on optimizing images for local search, our bike retailer could greatly increase his traffic by simply correctly optimizing his alternative text on the Gallery of images submitted by his readers. A click of the above screen shot will provide ample evidence of missed opportunity. Don’t let the same be said of your site.

“Always add ALT text into image tags! Describe the images using valuable keywords. Do not over-stuff keywords into ALT text! Make it brief, and naturally-written. Using ALT text is also good for best usability and accessibility as well. For a map image, the ALT text ought to include the business name and location. Ex: “Acme Hotel at 100 Elm St., Springfield, MO 65721″”
(Source)

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: Blog Marketing, local_search, marketing_opportunities, optimizing, relevant_content, search_engine_visibility, traffic, universal_search

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 am and is filed under Search Engine Visibility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.