The fact is we know search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live can really bring in a lot of traffics if your blog/webpage is listed at the first or second pages of SERP (Search Engine Result Page). However, it is not so easy to gain top ranking for keywords search result. The good news is almost every search engines provide image search option. As a webmaster to your blog, that is a blessing and a curse at the same time. First of all, it is a curse because people can steal your image content or by hot-linking to your images. It is a blessing because if your images are optimized for search engines, it can bring in traffics to your blog too. The mathematics is simple, more traffic leads to more income from your advertisements and affiliates marketing.

Here are few simple steps that you can take to optimize your blog for Google Image Search before the next Google Bot update and get your images listed on Google Image Search.

1. Use a descriptive image filename Instead of the standard filename generated by your digital camera, try provide a more descriptive image filename. For example for the image above, it is better to name the file as man-and-monkey-riding-yellow-car.jpg instead of DSC1233.jpg.

2. Attach a 7-8 description with both the ALT and TITLE attributes of the IMG tag

Basically every standards-compliant, Google-sensitive image reference should contain 5 key items:

• 1. A src attribute specifying the URL link of the image
• 2. A width declaration in which the width of the image is specified in pixels
• 3. A height declaration in which the height of the image is specified in pixels
• 4. An alt attribute that describes the content of the image—this is the #1 element of image-oriented Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• 5. A title attribute that contains text to be displayed when the user hovers his/her mouse over the image

Therefore, for the same image above,

<img src="http://www.your-blog.com/man-and-monkey-riding-yellow-car.jpg" width="220" height="212" alt="Man and Monkey Riding Yellow Car" title="Man and Monkey Riding Yellow Car" />

3. Make your image stand out. If possible, try to wrap text around your images using float. If your site does not allow you to wrap your images using float, then the next best thing is to place all your images near to texts that describe your image. For example, if you have a computer image then it is best to place it next to texts that describe computer rather than a car.

That’s it. A few simple steps to make sure all your images are Google Image Search compliant. Now all you got to do is to provide more contents, and watch out for those incoming traffics from image searches. If your site has not yet been indexed for images — be patient. It may take up to 6 month for them to appear on Google.

Here are some successful stories and discussions from bloggers with Google Image Search :

• Bloggers Exploit Google Image Search
• Optimizing Images for Long Tail Searches
• Google Images: Another source for free traffic