This is for serious marketers who are intent on making sure their marketing campaigns On Line are extremely successful.

Let’s have a look at the On Line Marketing world today: A net-savvy business world where it has become common for every On Line Business to have a website which they use expressly for advertising their main products and/or services. Now more than ever before and with the development of multiple search engines we find that it has naturally meant that it is becoming so much easier for the thrifty potential customers to simply log into Google/Yahoo or Bing and search for the things and services they want On Line.

This means that if a website to really be successful in its goal and in capturing and linking with potential customers it really should appear on Page One TWO or Three of Google Yahoo Bing or other search engines. Next the individual page rank needs to be high – Achieving this correctly will ensure that potential customers will be linking with your On Line Marketing and offers. One cost effective method is by applying search engine optimization, popularly referred to as SEO. As a business tool this is used as an important planned On Line marketing strategy, when done and implemented correctly increases and links potential customers of quantity and quality to your particular advertising website via as many search engines as possible..

Achieving exceptional SEO will not only affects the websites search engine ranking results in all Multi media sectors of the Internet- Google Yahoo or Bing Image searches, along with video ranking and finally your industry specific vertical search engines.

As more and more On Line Marketing owners joined the WWW so the importance of the good SEO evolved. Webmasters realized that search engines could be misled. Very soon Webmasters were providing irrelevant Meta tags on a webpage; this resulted in the search engines ignoring the Meta tags for indexing of the pages. As a consequence instead of increasing the number of hits on a web page especially those being used as a form of advertising in order for the On Line Business to increase sales and generate huge revenue.

Initially in ranking a web page the number of inbound links was also included resulting in the higher the rank of the page which meant the ON Line Marketing had more chances of being viewed by a potential customer.

As we all know it has not ended there as algorithms have continued to evolve and now include various other on-page factors such as rank and off-page factors such as hyperlinks. As the SEO of web pages has evolved to keep pace with search engine algorithms which have become more and more difficult for the average webmaster as top search engines like Google Yahoo and Ping keep their algorithms formulas a secret, On Line Marketing Owners have found the cost of webpage advertising is increasing as the cost of high quality SEO increases, On Line Marketing’s (advertisers) have found that they increasingly have to pay for website-SEO or learn how to do it themselves. For the Web surfer this has had a  resulted in exceptional high quality web pages getting top rankings.

On Line Marketing owners are now appreciating that part of their advertising  involves retaining not just a good Webmaster but also exceptional SEO team or learning how to do SEO themselves to see a very good return on their investments. On Line Business owners now understand that just like print advertising in the past website advertising today can be risky.

SEO has its risks though no where near as risky as it was in the past to the savvy On Line Business owner. Although Search engines can without prior hint or notice change their algorithms and the particular search engine say Google Yahoo or Bing will stop directing visitors to the web page. We are finding more and more that search engines like Yahoo have an algorithm that extracts pages according to the cost per click or set fee not according to the page rank. For On line Marketing’s this has meant that they as advertisers wanting to have their web page containing their On Line Marketing ad displayed on Yahoo, they must expected to pay money for the web page to be ranked.

Controversial Yes , It is felt that only the National businesses will be able to afford to pay Yahoo to increase the number of hits of their page even though the smaller businesses might have a better quality page and product.

Bing is now drawing some attention and how they rank websites is still to be proven but keywords in Title tags may prove to be important with Bing SEO.

Google Ad Words still one of the most popular explores ads which have words typed in the search box by the surfer though the cost of these ads can expose businesses to low return on investment as what is know as tier kickers click on the ads with no intention of buying. This reinforces the need to have exceptional SEO on every web page for the ON LINE Marketing owner.

A new form of advertising is becoming more popular this is known as Keyword advertising involves advertisers who buy URLs (Domains) for a web site and place their ads at that location.

We now see how as the Internet and WWW have exploded and evolved into Business Owners Front Window so has the rolls played by Webmasters and SEO companies and Internet Marketing training of the standard experienced with LetITPay and YourNetBiz

How ? Yet another how to do?

No this is important to everyone using blogs and web pages with Images that they have taken the time to upload to their site. Give them good descriptive tags for google to pick up it will help your SEO Robs article on the subject is imformative.

What is Google Image Search?

Google has a dedicated version of its search engine called Image Search which helps find images. Claiming to be the most comprehensive image search facility on the web, it has billions of images from websites already within its index. When searching for images, you can tailor the search for various sizes and choose a specific type of image you’re looking for, such as a photo, clipart or head shot.

When clicking on a image, the image will load as a preview in one frame, whilst showing the website the image is from in a frame below. This gives you the option of visiting the website or enlarging the image to full size. Google Image Search is popular. It actually gets more traffic than Yahoo, Window Live Search and Ask Jeeves.

Why is Google Image Search Important To Me? As mentioned, Google Image Search gets more traffic than supposed major search engines in the UK, typically getting more visits than websites such as Amazon and MySpace (Source: Hitwise). This means Google Image Search is a potential source for traffic to your site, and although perhaps not as targeted as conventional search, implies that people are actively searching for what you offer.

The biggest reason to start optimizing for Google Image Search is that it is not as competitive as normal search, despite the great amount of traffic it can provide. Although ranking well in Google Image Search itself does not help your conventional search engine rankings, a byproduct of ranking well in Google Image Search could mean this will happen eventually because of the viral potential.

How Do I Get My Images onto Google Image Search?

You cannot submit images in the same way you can submit your website or sitemap to Google. Results are entirely shown by Google’s algorithm after indexing all websites it finds. Google’s imaging spider is called Google Image Bot. It crawls the web and indexes all of the pages it can find. Being a program, it cannot ’see’ images, so it has other ways of determining an image’s relevancy. These factors are:

1. Descriptive Image Name

When optimizing a website, we have talked about relevancy in other articles. It sounds obvious, but you have to talk about what you do. Integrating keyword phrases into this content is essential and makes a genuine difference to rankings. In a simplified way, this is no different for images.

Your images should be named after their subject. For example, if you want to come up in Google Image Search for David Beckham you should call it something along the lines of ‘david-beckham.jpg’ as opposed to something generic such as ‘photo1234.jpg.’ Likewise, if you have a folder full of David Beckham images, name the folder descriptively too.

2. Compliant Images

Creating accessibility compliant images works in hand with being descriptive and relevant. There are a number of criteria you have to meet to have an officially compliant image. These criteria are:

• A ’src’ attribute specifying the URL of the image
• A width and height declaration of the image in pixels
• An ‘alt’ attribute that describes the content of the image
• A ‘title’ attribute that contains a text description when hovering over the image

The ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tag are specifically important for optimization as they are way of building in keyword phrases, e.g. David Beckham. Below is an example of how the code and image should look for the David Beckham image:

3. On Page Optimization

If you’re reading this far, you probably know a fair amount about Search Engine Optimization. In order to get your images ranking well in Google Image Search, you’ll need to have the whole page optimized towards that image. Therefore, try not to be optimizing the page for more than one subject, such as mixing David Beckham with Kevin Pietersen (he’s a cricketer for the Yanks reading this!).

You should concentrate on being descriptive for the Title and Meta tags. One of the more important factors specific to Image Search optimization is not only concentrating on relevant content, but specifically the content in close proximity to the image. Bear this in mind when setting the layout of the page!

4. PageRank and Backlinks

Another factor shared with general Search Engine Optimization is that Google will rank an image higher if it is on an authority page. This means a page that has backlinks and consequently, a relatively good Google PageRank. Try to generate backlinks to the specific page by visiting forums, blogs and other websites related to the subject matter. Also be sure to internal link to the page so it is indexed quickly and gains some PageRank from your established pages. For both inbound and internal links, make sure they have descriptive anchor text.

5. Website Relevancy

Although important, PageRank isn’t as important with Image Search as with ranking on Google’s main search engine. Website relevancy counts for more, so if you had a whole website dedicated to David Beckham, this would be better than having a single page. If this isn’t possible, try to create a ‘theme’ within your website where you create more than one page about the subject matter. You should then inter-link these pages.

Website Relevancy is considered of growing importance within the SEO world and should be factored into your website wide optimization planning.

6. Image Storage

Related to relevancy, Google’s Image Guidelines suggest saving all related images in the same folder. If Google can see you concentrate on this subject, this could potentially boost your ranking within Google Images. Likewise, if you talk a lot about the chosen subject across many pages, you may want keep them under a well titled sub-folder.

Avoid Duplication

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, duplicate content is a bad thing. Copying your own content across many websites, or worse still, stealing someone else’s content, is something you should avoid. The Google algorithm is clever enough to know which came first, and it is no different with images. You can see this mentioned by Peter Linsley (Google’s Product Manager) on YouTube.

How do you avoid duplication with an image? Of course, because search engines can’t actually see images, you can use the same ones as repeated elsewhere. Just ensure they are named differently and are a different size. Having a variation of sizes could help traffic as users can specify to only view small, medium and large images.

My Page is Well Optimized, Why am I not Showing on Google Image Search?

The Google Image Bot does not crawl as often as Google’s search engine bot “GoogleBot.” This is why having a high PageRank is important, because it demonstrates you have plenty of backlinks. The more roads that lead to you, the bigger the chances of the Google Image Bot visiting your website and the page in question.

The Viral Effect

People often use Google Image Search so they can share an image or use it themselves. If certain pages on your website are getting a lot of traffic, consider watermarking the images with your website address, as this could be free advertising for you. You can check your website logs by using a program such as Google Analytics which will reveal what websites are using your images directly (known as hot linking).

When watermarking images, do not make your website address or logo too obtrusive. People simply won’t use your image which will render your hard work pointless. Here is an example of our David Beckham photo with a Webtacular watermark.

http://www.webtacular.co.uk/images/articles/photo-david-beckham-watermark.jpg

Alternative Revenue Stream

Some images you have on your website may not have a direct link to something you provide or sell. The truth is, views from Google Image Search generally don’t convert into sales any where near as well as conventional search. This doesn’t mean you can’t make money from an image that ranks well in Google Image search however!

A percentage of people using Image Search are actively seeking more information on the subject matter. By installing Google AdSense on your website, you can earn revenue by having Sponsored Links on your page. Google’s AdSense automatically tailors adverts to the content on your page, delivering highly targeted links that should generate clicks (and therefore money) to you.

By showing adverts related to the page’s content, Google AdSense also works as a useful diagnostic tool to see how well optimized your pages are for Image Search.

Google Image Labeler

In August 2006, Google launched the Image Labeler (http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/) service as a beta. Three years later, it’s still under beta. This may be because they rely on the public to use it. It is marketed as a ‘game’ where two users race against each other to label images. Clever ploy to get people to categorise millions of images without paying them? You decide…

Effectively, the Image Labeler tells Google what keyword phrases an image should come up for in the Image Search results. The ‘game’ is random so there is no way of finding your own images, but with thousands of users, someone else could be doing you a favor.

In order to have your images show up in Google Image Labeler you will need to authorise it first. To do this, log in or setup a Google Webmaster account. Under ‘Settings’ there is a checkbox to choose to be included.

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Rob Fenn is an SEO specialist, working within the Webtacular (http://www.webtacular.co.uk) department of the website design firm Sixth Sense ESP (http://www.sixthsense-esp.co.uk), which focuses on Internet Marketing for SMEs. Outside of SEO, Rob is also a Google AdWords Qualified Professional.
This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com