SEO Your Images: Enhanced Image Search

We already know that ALT tags should be used for relevant images (I say relevant because you can skip putting ALT tags for images placed in your page for purely aesthetic and/or organisational purposes such as borders). However, what many neglect to do is to take advantage of Google’s enhanced image search. The enhanced image search is actually very useful for helping the images in your pages rank better in Google images SERPs. Enhanced image search actually helps you rank better through the selection of labels that are more relevant to the images in your site. According to Google they are able to associate the image sin your site with relevant labels through the use of Google Image Labeler.

To opt-in to Google’s enhanced image search simply login to Google Webmaster Tools, choose the URL of the site you wish to have the enhanced image search enables, click Tools, and then click on Enable enhanced image search.

If you have a graphics intensive site you should really opt-in to this feature. If you worry that your images will rank better than your site and that users will end up simply ripping off your images (many actually do not visit the actual site but only go to the image URL) you can remedy this problem by redirecting users sent by Google. You can also disallow hotlinking of images.

What is Google Page Rank?

Your Google PageRank tells how important your website is. The importance of your website is gauged by how many websites link back to you. And it is not as simple as it seems. Even the websites linking to you too must have a good Google PageRank. This means the websites linking to you should also be linked to by websites being linked to other, well-linked websites. So in a sense, every website being considered for your PageRank should enjoy a higher PageRank.

The inbound links to your website are counted as “votes”. So the more votes you have, the higher PageRank your earn. You can view a website’s (including yours) by installing (if it is not already installed) the Google Toolbar that resides in the upper part of your browser once the Google toolbar is installed. In the Google PageRank button there is a green bar that ranges from 0/10 to 10/10. As a said, the websites sending you inbound links should also enjoy higher PageRanks (PR). The more links you get from higher PageRank websites, the less links you have to garner in order to attain a higher PageRank.

People have written complete research papers on how Google calculates PageRanks but if you are reading this just to search engine optimize your website, then the only thing worth knowing is that you should get inbound links from trusted websites that get lots of targeted traffic — this is the only thing that matter as far as your PageRank goes.

PageRanks used to be taken seriously a long time back, but not now. They do matter, but not to a great extent. You can enjoy top rankings in the search pages even with a PageRank 1.