Are images that important for SEO?

[Tatsuya]

Hi, I was wondering if putting images to the posts in my moneysite is really that important for SEO. I monetize using adsense.

I was reading some posts from jascoken who spoke about overoptimization. Now I feel that I am overoptimizing my posts and that might be counterproductive in the long run. What are your opinions?

 

[-Jericho-]

I like to add images with keyword filenames, titles, and alts. This then allows me to lower the keyword percentage in the actual post and focus on related keywords for better variety. I don't think you can go wrong with images.

 

[_Chip_]

I like to add images with keyword filenames, titles, and alts. This then allows me to lower the keyword percentage in the actual post and focus on related keywords for better variety. I don't think you can go wrong with images.

this.

 

[Techxan]

Search engines like images and video. Its not a matter of importance. It is more like images help a little, but you won't get penalized for a lack of them. You just get more points if you do use them. Using multimedia is just a part of your on page optimization, without it your site is not as optimized as it could be.

 

[mark27]

I have a site where about 90% of my traffic comes from google image search. Very few people really optimize and do seo for just the images, so that's allowed me to rank very well for keywords into the 400,000+ searches per month. That's something I would never be able to do in normal search. The site's in the beauty/fashion niche by the way, so people definitely search for images.

If your only goal is to raise rank in the standard search I don't know if images help, but they can definitely provide alternative traffic in certain niches.

 

[ActionTaker]

Search engines like images and video. Its not a matter of importance. It is more like images help a little, but you won't get penalized for a lack of them. You just get more points if you do use them. Using multimedia is just a part of your on page optimization, without it your site is not as optimized as it could be.

You're contradicting yourself

 

[Tatsuya]

I like the images in the posts but I was thinking about a ROI perspective.
It takes a few minutes to search for an image and insert it in the post, but I was wondering if the effort was really worth it since the time used adds up if you have to publish many posts.

 

[Techxan]

You're contradicting yourself

In what way?

 

[contentcouch]

Better optimize the images only if those are of your own. Don't copy them from someone else's site and try to optimize them.

 

[seoguru13]

The traffic via images.google is quite strong.. Though that traffic will not buy products off your website, you might get lucky with a click or too. I remember having immense traffic for the keyword "buy now button" .. almost 10 hits a day

 

[teflonbrain]

Just want to emphasize what's already been said from my experience, having images is a plus. I've received a lot of traffic from images that showed up in the search engines as well. But you have to take a whole extra 30 seconds and optimize your image to get the benefit.

Images and videos make a huge difference with Google when it comes to ranking. I know that much from years of experience in SEO. It's worth the effort, both for the search engines and the people accessing my sites.

Like contentcouch said, do NOT copy and paste from someone else's site. Each image has unique codes imbedded in them and can come back to bite you in the butt Pay the $1 to get blog-ready images off of 123rf.com or veer.com or istockphoto.com, to name a few. The photo houses are going after people breaking copyrights every day. Saving a single $1 by copying an image can cost you big time.

 

[NikosX]

of course they are important. and the most important is to have + alternate text. I currently rank no.1 in several different images... you can't imagine the ammount of traffic i get only from this one on my main site/blog.

 

[ActionTaker]

In what way?

If first you say it doesn't punish you not to have them but then that it does in fact make a difference if you have them or not then you're contradicting yourself as it would in fact punish you not to have them.

 

[Techxan]

You are not understanding what I said. Google applies penalties if you do certain things. If you spam links you get a penalty, if you keyword stuff, you get a penalty.

It also awards points for the things that you do right. Not awarding you points because you missed a particular aspect of you on page SEO is not the same as penalizing your site, it is simply not granting you credit for something that you did not do.

This is a far cry from penalizing you for something you did do. True, you did not score as well as you could, but almost no one actually fully optimizes their web pages anyway. They do what they know how to in order to get the best score possible.

The pages inability to achieve a score as high as possible is not the same as a site that has had their score calculated and then having a penalty applied.

If you are going to be in IM, you really need to understand the difference.

 

[Kikerinka]

My humble opinion is that you should have images on your site, but should not optimize it for keyword. My experience: I was first for term "Ace" and some other similar terms. Many people came to the articles, just to download the image. What it means in the final result?

• Article has pretty high bounce rate = negative SEO points
• Article makes no money, or at least it's CTR is very low, what consequently leads to Adsense displaying shitty ads there. So even if someone comes to the article through normal search and click, you get low CTR.... = bad for you again.

 

[Techxan]

Sorry, tried to include the quote, mods please delete one of those responses.

 

[Codythebest]

Always put an image in your article.
Make sure to name them properly. Here is an example:
www.atlantarealestate.com/propertiesinatlanta/houseforsaleinatlanta.jpg
insteadof
www.atlantarealestate.com/images/DSC123.jpg
Use the alt tag as well.

 

[Techxan]

If first you say it doesn't punish you not to have them but then that it does in fact make a difference if you have them or not then you're contradicting yourself as it would in fact punish you not to have them.

Re: Are images that important for SEO?
You are not understanding what I said. Google applies penalties if you do certain things. If you spam links you get a penalty, if you keyword stuff, you get a penalty.

It also awards points for the things that you do right. Not awarding you points because you missed a particular aspect of you on page SEO is not the same as penalizing your site, it is simply not granting you credit for something that you did not do.

This is a far cry from penalizing you for something you did do. True, you did not score as well as you could, but almost no one actually fully optimizes their web pages anyway. They do what they know how to in order to get the best score possible.

The pages inability to achieve a score as high as possible is not the same as a site that has had their score calculated and then having a penalty applied.

If you are going to be in IM, you really need to understand the difference.

 

[hello1505]

I think images so important for SEO. My music blog have visitors via google search images

 

[zmoney]

Really, todays SEO is almost common sense.

Do you like to be on a blog that has user interaction like Fast Facts, Vids, Pictures?

Common sense will lead you....