Optimize your images for Search Engines:
- Keywords in alt text, text around the image, image name, page title;
- Preferred image formatting – jpg;
- Separate SE accessible image folder;
- Image freshness. (SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh);
- Enabled image search option at Google webmaster tool.
- Reasonable image file size (see the discussion at WW)
- Limited number of images per page;
- Popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).
Optimize your images for social media:
(obvious) use really great images to give your readers another reason to spread the word;
(to get Digg thumbnailed submission) stick to jpg format and make sure the images can be resized to (or already are) 160×120 or 160×160 pixels (Unless you have an image that can be resized that way Digg will not offer the submitter a thumbnail to go with the post).
Optimize your images for people:
- People pay more attention to a clear image where they can see details (choose high quality images).
- (Clean, clear) faces in an image get more eye fixation. (don’t use abstract images too often).
- Keep them relevant: images are not the first thing a visitor sees on a web page but they can compel him to stay (according to the eye-tracking research web text is prior to images; when looking at a printed article people see images first; with web page they see text first – nevertheless images make the visitor stay and remember the page via relevant associations).
Gender specific:
- Women are better at recognizing facial emotions than men (research):
- Men seem to be more likely than women to first look at faces rather than other parts of a nude body (source);
- Women are more interested in images with more than one person (source).
Tools and fun for image optimization:
- SEO Friendly Images WP Plugin – automatically optimize image ALT and TITLE with the help of post variable;
- Play with Google Images labeling (and help improve the quality of Google image search).
How to find images online.
- Finding Stock Photos – lists 3 great resources for stock photos;
- A Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images – describing (1) which Flickr images you are allowed to use; (2) tactics to quickly find best images
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