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A Photo is Worth a Thousand LinksHow Google Treats & RanksImages
SMX East 2013
About This Presentation• How Well Do Images
Perform in Search Engines?
• How Has That Changed?
• How Do You Make Your Images Rank?
• What’s Changed?• What’s Changing?
How Did Images Once PerformIn August 2010, RankAbove and comScore conducted a large study on how universal results—including images—performed in search engines, compared with regular text results.
How Did Images Once PerformIn that study, images kicked ass.
How Did Images Once PerformWell, most of the time.
How Did Images Once PerformIn August 2013, we re-ran the study.
How Do Images Perform Today?All universal results dropped since our 2010 study, but only images lost to non-universal results—except for celebrity images.
Why?CTR from all universal results dropped as users either got more accustomed to seeing those results or because Google offered searchers more information on universal searches without having to click. But images suffered more than most.
Why?Mostly because of UI changes made by Google.
Why?Unless the users clicks “Visit Page” or on the image,
he or she does not continue on to the site.
What Happened?That UI change occurred in January 2013, and hit sites
hard.
What Happened?That UI change occurred in January 2013, and hit sites
hard.
What Happened?That UI change occurred in January 2013, and hit sites
hard.
What Else Did Google Change?Google makes changes to search all the time.
What Else Did Google Change?All of these things are not like the other
What Else Did Google Change?It didn’t used to be like that. Uniqueness now
counts.
How Do Images Rank?• Good SEO (on-page and
off-)• Unique Image• Surrounding Text• Image Name (not Alt
Tag)
Which Sites Rank• Lots of text with one or two images.• Lots of images with a bit of text.• Lots of images and lots of text.• What doesn’t rank: one image with no
text. Sound familiar? I just described the average slideshow
Text Sites RankSites with lots of relevant content, well-named images and good overall SEO often rank highly for image searches—as long as they have unique images.
Multiple Image Sites RankSites with many images on a single page often rank as well, as they are almost always assured of at least one unique image—as long as they have some relevant text and good SEO.
Multiple Image Sites RankAnd they don’t even have to be ugly. Take a look at Boston.com’s Big Picture for a beautiful employment of this technique.
Combo Sites Rank Best
Sites with good text and lots of images not surprisingly do the best.
How To Get The ClickGive people a reason to click: more pictures, or a higher quality or non-censored version. But ensure that the same functionality exists on your site as well.
How To Get The ClickOr use scripts, like WP-PicShield, that add a watermark on the fly.
How To Get The ClickOr use scripts, like WP-PicShield, that add a watermark on the fly.
And Get Your Traffic Back1. Google Image Search
update hits site2. Watermarks
implemented and traffic returns
