Follow these simple steps when uploading images to increase your SEO ranking as well as your chances of showing up in Google searches

 

Getting your work seen by potential clients is one of the hardest things for any photographer to achieve in this digital economy.

 

There are plenty of excellent photographers out there hungry for work. Your job is to work harder than ever to find your niche, build your website and public profile, and get in front of as many potential clients as you can so that they can see your work, find you, and hire you for a job.

 

Naturally, the world’s most trafficked search engine, Google, is a great place to be discovered. After all, there are over 3.5 billion searches conducted every single day, so you can’t afford not to come up when Google displays results. Sure, it’s going to take some time and hard work to properly optimize your images; but in the long run, you will gain more than you may lose by being visible and findable via Google Image Search.

 

So how can you make sure your images show up on Google?

 

The principles that apply to optimizing your website for search also apply for images. This means using the SEO tools available to you to signpost the image content so that it appears when someone searches for it. Remember that Google can’t “see” the image by itself – it requires a description of the image from you in order to understand what it’s about.

 

Think about the following factors when setting up your image:

 

  • Title of the web page
  • File name of the photo
  • Description
  • Alt-Text
  • Anchor text of the link on the image


Let’s take a closer look at the two most important factors here.

 

Image Naming

 

Once the image is uploaded, let the keywords on your page guide you when writing the title of your photo. It doesn’t have to be poetic or flowery. It should be simple and descriptive, and it should employ the same keywords. A tight connection between the page title, the keywords, and the image title will rank very well with Google.

 

Let’s use the photograph above as an example.

 

Your keywords on a page featuring the picture would probably include Bride, Wedding, Dress, Veil, Black and White, etc.

 

From those keywords, this image could be titled ‘Bride in veil looks down at bouquet of flowers.’ This would give Google clear indicators of when to serve this image.

 

Description

 

This is your chance to build on the File Name and give some more information. Stick with the keywords and imagine what kind of search terms someone who is looking for this image would use. Using the same image as an example, your description of this image should be something like: ’Bride in veil holds a bouquet of flowers.’

 

By carefully selecting a few keywords and using them properly throughout your SEO process, you create the conditions that make it easy for Google to find you.

 

And it’s easy to do. When you upload a picture to an album on your Folio website, the template grabs the existing name of the photo and makes it simple for you to change the title and provide a description.

 

The last element that you need is patience. Your image won’t show up on search results straight away. It takes a bit of time before Google indexes the site. So, set it up correctly and then move on to the next task and check back in the next few weeks. Google will do the rest.

 

Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Folio’s easy-to-use photography website builder today.