Rank in Image Searches and Get Valuable, Untapped Traffic

Why and How to Rank in Image Searches

One aspect of search that doesn't get discussed often enough is image search. It's such a huge part of search and the daily habits of web surfers all over the world, it's amazing how little attention is actually paid to it when it comes to marketing and optimization. Have tips for optimizing for image search? Share them here.

Google Director of Product Management R.J. Pittman dropped some facts at SES. 300 million digital photos are taken every day. 100 billion images are taken per year. There were half a trillion images in circulation by 2009. That's the past up to the present. Do you think it's going to slow down? Pittman says there were 800 million camera phones sold last year, and there may be more images online than web pages.

Eric EngeOn Google there are hundreds of millions of image searches every day. Eric Enge, President of Stone Temple Consulting says that image search makes up about 5.7% of all Google searches. "We estimate that up to 15% of all search is image related," he says.

Why Image Search is So Important

If the above information wasn't enough to convince you of the importance of image search, consider this. When images appear in blended search results (such as Google's universal search), the images affect what is clicked on the results page. Enge says an eye tracking study proved this, but it makes perfect sense if you think about it. The image is obviously going to catch your eye, regardless if it's the top result or the 5th.

Todd Schwartz Todd Schwartz, Group Product Manager for Bing says that engagement is quite high when it comes to image search. Consumers looking for images also end up visiting a lot of web pages. In many cases, images can simply speed up the decision process on the consumer's part. You can see why this would be effective in eCommerce. "When users are expecting images in a search session it actually increases the speed of a searchers task," says Schwartz. "Images simply speed decision making." He would know. Bing is the "decision engine."

Tips for ranking in Image Search

In a post about ranking in "five other Google engines," I cited some tips from Search Engine Journal's Dev Basu, who recommended the following for image SEO:

- Add images to your Google Local Business profile
- Enable Google Image Labeler in your Google Webmaster Tools account.
- Add images to local business citation sources.
- Add images to blog posts or news articles for syndication in Google news.

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