Improve Search Engine Ranking - Renaming Your Images
By Guest Writer Scott Whitehead
This concept is relatively new, however promises to reap high results. Because few webmasters use image renaming strategies, there is an opportunity to leapfrog your competitors in search engine rankings, and to gain new listings with a specialist type of search engine; namely the image search engines.
The way it works is simple; your site has images on each page - and some of these images are universal, perhaps your company logo, home button, or other buttons used to navigate the pages. Normally, these buttons have logical image names, such as home.jpg or logo.gif. However, the images names can be put to a better use by changing them to match the content of the page(s) that they are placed on. To effectively achieve a value from this, you need to do the following:
Make a copy of your image and rename it using relevant keywords for that page
Change the page link to use the new image with the relevant keywords
Submit your site to the search engines, and submit the images to image search engines
The logic behind this approach
Some search engines consider the name of the image when ranking your page, therefore you can use this to gain a competitive advantage by renaming it using keywords relevant to the page's content. If you are targeting a key phrase, use - or _ in between the keywords for your image name - it cannot have any spaces. For example: a navigation button on a software store website may currently be called "home.gif", because clicking it returns the user to the home page. However, by changing the name of the image to "software-store.gif", you have just added more key words to the HTML coding of the page.
Be sure to update your page link to the new image - remember, the only noticeable difference will be in the coding. Your visitors will not see the change.
Submit the images themselves to image search engines, such as Ditto.com, AltaVista.com Image Search and AllTheWeb.com Image Search. This can bring more traffic to your site.
If you are planning to roll out optimized pages for search engine submission, using image naming approaches can only help focus your site for improved search engine ranking.
If you are using the image on more than one page, remember there is no limit to the number of copies you can make and rename. Roll this idea out as often as you need to on as many pages as you need to.
Hint: If you are using an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, you can use the replace all feature to make it easier to keep track of which images have been renamed, and which have not.
Using the "Edit > Replace" options, input .jpg and replace with 2.jpg. This will now change all the image locations to grey blocks, where the computer cannot find these files. Each grey block represents a file where the image needs renaming and the hyperlink recreating.
Article by Scott Whitehead, the project manager of ZestCity.com, a website for small businesses around the world, advising webmasters regarding online marketing and website promotion. For more information on his website promotion services, click here or email Scott at webpromo@zestcity.com.
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