Optimize Images for Search Engines

Optimize your images for search engines:

• Keywords in alt text, text around the image, image name, page title;
• Preferred image formatting - jpg;
• Separate SE accessible image folder;
• Image freshness. (SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh);
• Enabled image search option at Google webmaster tool.
• Reasonable image file size (see the discussion at WW)
• Limited number of images per page;
• Popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).

Optimize your images for social media:

• (obvious) use really great images to give your readers another reason to spread the word;
• (to get Digg thumbnailed submission) stick to jpg format and make sure the images can be resized to (or already are) 160×120 or 160×160 pixels (Unless you have an image that can be resized that way Digg will not offer the submitter a thumbnail to go with the post).

Optimize your images for people:

• People pay more attention to a clear image where they can see details (choose high quality images).
• (Clean, clear) faces in an image get more eye fixation. (don’t use abstract images too often).
• Keep them relevant: images are not the first thing a visitor sees on a web page but they can compel him to stay (according to the eye-tracking research web text is prior to images; when looking at a printed article people see images first; with web page they see text first - nevertheless images make the visitor stay and remember the page via relevant associations).

Gender specific:

• women are better at recognizing facial emotions than men (research):
• men seem to be more likely than women to first look at faces rather than other parts of a nude body (source);
• women are more interested in images with more than one person (source).

Tools and fun for image optimization:

• SEO Friendly Images WP Plugin - automatically optimize image ALT and TITLE with the help of post “%title” variable;
• Play with Google Images labeling (and help improve the quality of Google image search).

How to find images online.

• Finding Stock Photos - lists 3 great resources for stock photos;
• A Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images - describing (1) which Flickr images you are allowed to use; (2) tactics to quickly find best images.