Images and SEO

[Ash]

Q. Will a site that is regularly updated with images (no copy) gain any SEO benefits? Will this rely on the file name and alt tags?

Thanks.

 

[DavidL]

I think it would struggle to perform in a normal web search.... on the other hand images are great and under-used complimentary items to normal on-page seo

 

[James]

It will struggle my advise is Image (alt tag ) + at least a few lines of content about the image/ optimized page.

 

[Ash]

Thanks for the responses.

Here's a little test... if you search "web design inspiration" (with or without the quotes) in Google, what is the first site that comes up for you all please?

 

[soj]

webcreme.com for both with and without quotes

 

[Drop.com.au]

webcreme.com for both with and without quotes

Same

 

[Ash]

So would this top spot be a result of inbound links, because as far as I can tell webcreme is just a bunch of images and outbound links... am I missing something?

 

[Chris.C]

Q. Will a site that is regularly updated with images (no copy) gain any SEO benefits? Will this rely on the file name and alt tags?

Without having specifically tested it, I would think that a few inbound links and some basic image SEO, they should at least rank in the Google image search (I'm not certain about the web search though - I'd doubt it, except for cases where the images are embedded into the web search results).

Over the years I have had very significant amounts of traffic from Google image search - this by itself might be worth targeting.

So images even in their own right offer value, but in my experience it has normally been a case of the sum is greater than the parts (content + images) when it comes to rankings in both the image and web search.

 

[Ash]

Thanks for all the responses. I have another quick question about images and SEO...

Doe it matter where the images are hosted as long as they are embedded in my website? I.e., if I remotely host them on Picassa, Photobucket, Windows Skydrive etc... will my site get the hits from image search or will they?

Cheers.

 

[FirstPageResults]

They will get 'hits' as a hit is a request to the server for a file.

However, it's quite common to host media remotely these days considering how prevalent Content Delivery Networks are.. shouldn't be an issue. A google image search would still land on your page if your page is ranking

 

[Ash]

Thanks FPR, good to know.

 

[Lorenzo]

Google will always prefer fresh original content.