Want to know how to use Google Image Search to send traffic back to your site? To do this you need to understand how Google indexes images. Once you optimize your images for Google, they’ll appear in search results and ultimately lead traffic to your site. Here’s how to do it.

Why Use Google Image Search?

It’s all about traffic. It doesn’t matter how ‘good’ your site is, if you don’t get traffic your sunk. Over 8% of the traffic to my site comes from optimizing the images on my site. That’s a lot of free visitors for very little work

• Google Images bring your site a lot of visitors
• Google Images will drive extra traffic is your images rank page 1
• Google Images will drive extra traffic is they are heavily searched, so you want to think in terms of going for specific keywords.

Some sites get more traffic from Google Image search than regular search.

Understand Alt Text

The W3C says you should use Alt text on images to help visually impaired users browse your website. Remember, Google cannot see your site – it reads code.

So, you need to write the code so Google can read/see your site in the correct way, right?

Google Image Bot

This bot crawls the web, indexes images like the regular Googlebot does and looks for keywords.

These are two different bots. However the Google Image bot is very slow and doesn’t visit a site with the frequency of the regular Google search bot.

How To Optimize Images for Google

As Google can’t “see” images, it uses different ways to analyze every graphic.

Here are some of the things it looks for:

• Alt Text
• File Name
• Surrounding Text
• Page Title
• Links

My testing shows that Alt Text followed by the File Name are biggest factors in determining how Google Image indexes each image.

What is Alt Text?

This is the ‘alternative’ text you see when you hover over an image.

To include Alt Text in your code, do this:

<img src=”filename.gif” alt=”Enter Alternative Description Here”>

Use real words that will sense to humans and includes the right keywords – don’t over do it or Google will punish you for keyword stuffing.

Use words you would search for if looking for that image.

Avoid filler words such as like, the, and, or, we, are, for, etc.

Right: PayPal logo for ecommerce site

Wrong: this is a logo of PayPal for an ecommerce site

Keep is short and remember that Google prioritizes keywords from left to right.

So, write the most important keywords first.

Image File Name

This is also very important. How you name the image is as important, if not more, than the ALT text.

Instead of calling it pic1234.jpg

use descriptive text such as:

PayPal-logo-ecommerce-site

Also:

• Make the File Name the same, or very similar to the Alt Text.
• Don’t try and rank the same image for multiple terms by stuffing different keywords in to the Alt and File Names
• This will confuse the Googlebot
• Be consistent

Image File Structure

Use a consistent, and keyword rich, file structure for your images, for instance:

website.com/images/logos/paypal-ecommercec.jpg

Is much better than:

website.com/whatever/imgs/ppal23.jpg

Does It Work?

You can see if it works when you start seeing images.google.com in your server logs. These will also appear in your Google Webmaster and Analytics stats.

I get a consistent amount of traffic from specific keywords this way. It doesn’t take very long to do and once you create images with Google in mind, your traffic will begin to move up.

Let me know how you get on.

Do you need spend hours trying to make all your photos be the same size, format, with your company watermarks added in the corner? How can you convert 100 images to same file format, add a 1 pixel black border, and make them all the same size in less that 5 minutes? Here’s how.

How to Batch Process Groups of Images

I used to use Adobe Photoshop to batch process photos but have now moved to Snagit.

One of the hidden features in Snagit is its Batch Conversion Wizard. This lets you convert your images in a batch. Even better is that you can modify all the images on the fly, for example, give all the images a black border or converting them to the same file format.

This saves an immense amount of time ensures that all your images are the same size, format and whatever settings you want.

Snagit Batch Process Wizard

You can apply SnagIt’s image editing filters to multiple captures in batch processing mode. You can also convert one or more graphic image files from one format to another.

For example, you might want to convert low-res BMP files into PNG and store them in another directory for your website.

The SnagIt Catalog Browser processes the file conversions and saves them to the Output directory you want. Any filters you applied appear in the Conversion Filters box.

The files are individually converted to the selected format and stored in the folder you select.

NOTE: The original files are not changed. Snagit creates new files for each batch process.

How to Batch Process Images

You can batch process the images are follows:

Step 1. Select Files

1. In Windows Explorer, select the files you want to process.

2. Right-click on the files.

Tip: hold down CTRL and click on individual files if you don’t want all the images in the folder.

3. Select Snagit and Batch Convert Images.

Note: you can also use the Catalog Browser in Snagit. Open it and then use Edit, Select All to select all files or hold CTRL and select individual files.

Step 2. Conversion Filters

Use the conversion filters to:

• Modify the Color Depth
• Substitute Colors
• Change the Image Resolution
• Rescale the Image
• Add a Caption, for example, a notice or warning message
• Add a Border and select the size, color and other special effects
• Add a Watermark, for example, DRAFT, or the name of your website or business
• Trim the image, so that it’s more uniform

For example, in the screenshot, you can see that we added a white background, drop shadow and positioned it towards the lower right.

In this example, you can see that we added the www.Klariti.com logo to the lower left corner of the box shot.

And this is what the finished box shot looks like. You can add your own company logo to screenshots in the same way.

Once you have finished with the conversion filters, click Next.

Step 3. Output Options

Here you setup the output options:

1. In the Output directory, select a folder where you want to save the files.

2. In the File Format dropdown list, select a file format, for example PNG or JPG.

All files will be converted to the same format.

3. In File name:

Use the default Windows file name or create your own naming conventions.

Note: I have found the Automatic file name to be a bit problematic. You might need to experiment here until you get it right.

4. Click Next.

Step 4. Ready for the Conversion Process

Check that you’re happy with the settings. Go back and change if needs be.

Click Finish.

The conversion process starts.

When the conversion is complete, the converted images will be displayed in the output folder you selected and the Catalog Browser.

The images will be converted to format you selected, filters will be applied, and the new images will be saved to the folder you selected.

Summary

If you know better ways to convert images and run batch processes, please let me know. I used to use Photoshop but found it didn’t have the range of effects that Snagit has.

Is there another screenshot product that does a better job?

Most screenshot software doesn’t let you take a screen capture of the Windows menu bar. Here’s a workaround.
To Take a Screen Shot Of The Windows Start Menu Bar:

1. Hold down Shift
2. Press the Start Menu Bar
3. Press Print Screen on your keyboard.

BUT how do you do this?

Take a screenshot of the Window startup screen?

I don’t know. Do you?

If you do know, describe how to do this below.