7 Tips for Doing SEO for Google Image Searches

About a third of searches on Google are for images, so it is important to understand SEO for Google images. Doing SEO on images can help you to sell products and services and to get links and citations.

Let’s say that you have a page with images of some Yosemite National Park bears. Here are some of the elements of the images that Google might consider for ranking them in Google image searches:

1. Image File Name and Alt Attribute
The image file name and alt attribute can help with SEO for Google Image Searches.

2. Image Caption
The image caption can help with your image search rankings and can even be more effective than the alt attribute in some cases.

3. Sizes and Dimensions of Images
Google tends to not display images that are very large or very small. Also, they usually don’t display images that are very horizontal or very vertical. The images that Google tends to display are square images with dimensions of about 16 by 9, 4 by 3.

4. The Page
Google considers the page title and the text surrounding the images and checks if they are relevant. It also considers the page URL. If a page ranks well for a certain keyword in Google search (in the top 5-7), then the images from the page will often also rank as among the first in image search results.

5. Image Embeds
If your image has been embedded on many sites, this can impact your SEO for Google image searches.

6. Engagement
Popularity and engagement matter in Google image search results. If many people start to click on a certain image, Google will move it up in the search results. This means that your images should be interesting, high-quality, relevant graphics that people will want to click on.

7. Visual Matching
Google is becoming more sophisticated and can now determine if an image does not match its SEO and will not show that image for long if it is not in the correct category.