5 SEO techniques for website images

One of the most overlooked aspects of SEO is images. Most websites have lots of images but few actually apply SEO techniques to them.
Not implementing SEO techniques with your images could mean that you're missing out on valuable traffic from Google Image Search, which is one of Google's most popular properties. Here are 5 SEO tips that can help you capitalize on all of the searches that are being done for images.
Use Descriptive Image Names and Folder Names
If you're using image names like 00103.jpg on your website, you can't expect search engines to easily identify what the image might contain.
Use descriptive image names instead. If your website contains an image of a red iPod Nano, for instance, the image name red-apple-ipod.jpg is better. If you really want to get sophisticated, you can build a folder structure that includes relevant keywords as well (i.e. /products/apple/iPods/red-iPod-nano.jpg).
Unfortunately, a lot of content management systems and ecommerce platforms automatically give uploaded images useless names (and place them into folders with useless names) so you may need to modify your software to achieve better naming and folder structures. But if you have lots of images, doing so may be a worthwhile investment.
Use Descriptive Alt Tags
Another way you can give search engines clues about what's contained in your images is to use descriptive alt tags.
The more descriptive, the better, within reason, of course. You don’t want to be too generic, but at the same time you don’t want your alt tags to contain a Tolstoy novel. For instance, instead of using 'Ford Mustang' as your alt tag, 'This blue 1965 Ford Mustang won best of show' is better.
On my websites, I've noticed that Google Image Search seems to like sentence-form descriptions better and while I won't say that I have enough data to call this observation 100% accurate, it seems logical, as text in sentence-form is likely to contain more descriptive keywords and probably gives search engines a clue that you're not spamming.
On that note, a reminder: do not under any circumstances use keyword stuffing in your alt tags.
Use Descriptive Anchor Text
As with alt text, if you're linking to your images using text, use good anchor text that describes the contents of the image. Most of the time, this probably means that anchor text contains some of the same keywords you've used in the image name and alt text.
Use Larger Images
I've read several reports suggesting that Google Image Search prefers images that are on the larger side. While I have no first-hand evidence of this, it's important to remember that SEO isn't truly effective unless users click on your listings.
Since it does make sense that if someone is searching for an image, he'll probably be more inclined to click on a larger image with higher quality than a smaller image with lower quality, using a larger image seems to be a good approach where available and appropriate.
Focus on the Page
As with all SEO, context is everything. It's not just about naming your image files right, using good alt text, etc. It's about making sure that the pages your images are located on are tasty to search engines too.
When your pages themselves are well-optimized, the implementation of these image SEO tips will be icing on the cake.

25 SEO tips to create trust with the search engines

There's no two ways about this, Google and the other search engines have their favourites. I'm sure you've seen it all before, either working for your client or evaluating your competition. There are a number of sites in every niche, whatever content they publish they rank well whether or not the content is optimised, has any inbound links and without really trying too hard. 

You, on the other hand might have worked hard to rank for that content, have got some great natural links, lots of buzz but you've got little to show for it. What you don't know is that these websites have managed to reach a high trust level with the search engines which helps their content rank highly.
Building trust with the engines takes time (and patience) here are 25 essential SEO tips that will help:
1. Update your whois records and ensure there's a visible record of the person or company which owns the domain, address, telephone number and email address.

2. Although this might raise some eyebrows, I've had better results with top level domains so consider .com, .org, .net etc domain tlds (even if .tel domain does look cool).

3. The domain age is very important to Google, so when starting a new online business consider purchasing an exciting domain rather than registering a new domain. Sedo is a great place to start your search.

4. If the domain has more than 2 words, don't use hyphens in the URL otherwise it might look spammy so www.PremiumBlueWidgets.com is better than www.Premium-Blue-Widgets.com.

5. Google is assuming that if you've started your online business you're here to stay for the long run, therefore whether you're purchasing a new domain or renewing a domain, go for a longer renewal period of 2 plus years.

6. Get a fixed clean IP address and stick with it for the long run.

7. Verify your site with Google Webmaster central to learn about issues on your site which might affect your trust such as spyware infestation.

8. Place your contact details including phone number, address and even pictures of your office clearly on the site.

9. Have a visible privacy policy and terms or conditions when applicable and add them to your site maps.

10. Don't over-optimise your site because it could be an indication of some artificial work going on.

11. Don't repeatedly cross link between other sites you own as it might be a sign of trying to 'game the engines'.

12. Don't update existing content too often as it might be seen as a sign of manipulation.

13. Don't use doorway pages , it frustrates both the users and the engines.

14. Your links should come organically and the acceleration of link popularity should reflect that, so 1000 backlinks to a new site in one day is a bad sign.

15. Backlinks should include unoptimized anchor text as well as optimised text for example the-websol.blogspot.com rather than conversion rate optimisation because that's how most people link naturally.

16. When linking to you, the referring pages should have as little out going links as possible.
    
17. Keep your pages below 100K to ensure they're easily crawled.

18. Use Google's XML site map generator to create a site map and keep it updated whenever you add or remove pages.

19. Analyze your robot.txt file to ensure you're not blocking certain parts to your site. SEO Book has an excellent tool to analyze your robot.txt file.

20. Build on your great content to create natural links and avoid paid links so counting on social bookmark links.

21. Your content should have very low bounce rate as higher bounce rate is an indication of less relevant content.

22. A link from the three major human edited directories dmoz , Yahoo Directory and Best of The Web helps.

23. Limit your dofollow links to 100 (you might get away with 200), though this is very hard to maintain simply because the nature of the web is sharing.

24. For new domains, limit your dofollow links to trusted sites within your industry for the first 6 months.
25. Google likes fresh new content and even rewards using its fresh content algorithm so the more fresh unique content the better.

SEO tips for product pages

The SEO benefits of product pages can often be overlooked, with many just offering basic product details, photos and a brief description.
So how can you make the most of them from a search marketing perspective?
Here are some suggestions...

• Unique product descriptions
  Avoid simply reproducing the manufacturer’s product description as several other sites will probably be using it already. It may be easier but will not help you move up the rankings as search engines will mark it down as duplicate content.
  
  A unique product description should not only help your conversion rate, it should also allow you to attract more search traffic.
  
  In addition, a slightly lengthier product page will enable you to use more of your most important keywords and phrases. This could improve your rankings for a range of terms.
  
  
• Use keywords in URLs
  Many online retailers, especially those with large product ranges, use dynamic databases, which can produce some ugly, lengthy URLs which bear no relation to the product.
  
  Adding related keywords to your product page URLs will help them rank more highly in search engines, as well as making them more understandable.
  
  
• Use customer product reviews
  Customer reviews can not only help persuade shoppers to make purchases, they can also be very useful for SEO.