How Do You Optimize Your Website Photos?

ChrWright

I have literally thousands of photos on my website. I'm curious to hear from those in-the-know about what the current SEO wisdom is regarding photos.

My file names are a hodge podge of whatever the camera was calling them that day, plus some initials I tacked on when moving them around and sorting through the ones I would end up using.

Most of them are formated to 600 pixels wide, as that would fit the best in the majority of screens in use when I started my site 5 years ago.

I was recently at a client's house who was looking at my website on a new Apple computer with an ENOURMOUS monitor. My website photos looked way too small on it.

I hate to think of having to go through and reformat thousands of pictures, rename files, add description tags... but as SEO gets more competitive among local contractor sites I'm looking to stay ahead of the curve.

__________________

Christopher Wright, CR: President @ WrightWorks, LLC/President @ Central Indiana NARI, Named to the 2010 REMODELING Big50
www.WrightWorks.net - Facebook - Twitter - Carmel Remodeling
Indianapolis Kitchen Remodeling Contractor - You Can Get There From Here

ScipioAfricanus

If I understand the question correctly you may need to get a photo editing software like Corel (I use this one) or PhotoShop to batch re-size the photos. That way you don't have to do them individually.
You actually have THOUSANDS of pictures? Why?

IMHO no-one is going to go through all of them.

Andy.

__________________
www.draftinginoc.com

Leo G

You are not going to be able to optimize your photos if someone is going to be looking at them on a large screen with a high resolution. The higher the resolution the smaller the picture will look. You may have to have a link to a larger version for this type of client. Most of my photos on my site are 640x480. I have a few that can be shown larger by clicking on them. All it is, is another larger photo brought in by a link.

__________________
Sawdust Follows Me Everywhere

http://lrgwood.com
Custom Cabinets in Hartford County Connecticut

ChrWright

I add new photos to my portfolio each time I finish a project. They may not go through all of them, but they can scan through to see which ones are similar projects to theirs. I also get a lot of traffic based on the descriptions with each project.

For example... Search Google for 'Slate Floor Remodeling Pictures.' or 'Slate Shower Photos'. Analytics shows I get a lot of organic traffic from these kinds of searches. 'Bathroom Remodeling Photos' brings me up on page one--which is pretty damn good for a generic, non local keyword search.

However, when you search in Google Images, my stuff doesn't come up anywhere and that's why I'm asking about optimizing photos. I'm assuming keyword rich file names are part of it--but was curious to know what everyone else was doing.

I also often refer to them during meetings with potential clients as a visual reference to conditions that are similar, materials, combinations, layouts, etc.

__________________

Christopher Wright, CR: President @ WrightWorks, LLC/President @ Central Indiana NARI, Named to the 2010 REMODELING Big50
www.WrightWorks.net - Facebook - Twitter - Carmel Remodeling
Indianapolis Kitchen Remodeling Contractor - You Can Get There From Here

dhall

One other thought for you. I noticed when looking through your portfolio I kept having to open a picture and then back to the project page, open another image and then back. If you can set them up so when you open one you can click forward and backward through that project without closing and opening it would be alot more user friendly.

ChrWright

That's something else I need to work on, I know.

I built the original site with FrontPage so that's the gallery format I've continued to use. Some of the slide show galleries I've seen on other sites are slow to load and cumbersome to get around in so I've drug my feet on changing over.

I'm probably going to hire someone to overhaul everything, including the images. FrontPage has made my code a mess. My only hesitation is not wanting to upset the good things that have put me at the top of a number of my local keywords.

__________________

Christopher Wright, CR: President @ WrightWorks, LLC/President @ Central Indiana NARI, Named to the 2010 REMODELING Big50
www.WrightWorks.net - Facebook - Twitter - Carmel Remodeling
Indianapolis Kitchen Remodeling Contractor - You Can Get There From Here

Mike Finley

Chris, why would you want to be found for pictures?

But anyways to answer your question Photoshop is the work horse for optimization of digital photos.

ChrWright

That's not necessarily what I'm shooting for. I'm just curious to know how everyone is tagging their photos to get the best SEO benefit from them. I'm guessing the photos that come up on the Image search do so because their file names/alt text are keyword heavy.

I use Corel to optimize file size, view size, etc.... I was asking more along the lines of SEO.

__________________

Christopher Wright, CR: President @ WrightWorks, LLC/President @ Central Indiana NARI, Named to the 2010 REMODELING Big50
www.WrightWorks.net - Facebook - Twitter - Carmel Remodeling
Indianapolis Kitchen Remodeling Contractor - You Can Get There From Here

Mike Finley

Well you would tag them when you put them on your site wouldn't you? Change the names to whatever they are relevant to on the page you put them on and insert the alt text at that time?

ChrWright

I've not done that yet, so I'm having to go back. Before I wade in and make the changes, I was curious to find out what others have done.

For example...

Does it make sense to label all the kitchen photos:
Kitchen-Remodel-1.jpg
kitchen-Remodel-2.jpg
etc.

or, by manufacturer
Kraftmaid-Kitchen-1.jpg
etc.

or, material
Maple-Kitchen-1.jpg

I'm guessing the hyphenation rules apply the same as they do to page addresses?

I also don't want to get penalized, if that's possible, for overly repetitious file names or alt tags.

__________________

Christopher Wright, CR: President @ WrightWorks, LLC/President @ Central Indiana NARI, Named to the 2010 REMODELING Big50
www.WrightWorks.net - Facebook - Twitter - Carmel Remodeling
Indianapolis Kitchen Remodeling Contractor - You Can Get There From Here

SLSTech

I would go with MapleKitchen09a1.jpg
the 09 is for the year - a for first project followed by the picture number
Unless you are trying to become known for Kraftmaid cabinets - no sense using the name, now if you are - maybe KraftmaidMaple09a1 --- fortunately most browsers & systems are getting better with alternate characters (except for spaces)

I think the Search Engines get more info from the alt tag rather than the name
For quite a while all mine & some still are Img00411 - but one of my Slate Tile jobs popped up under Bathroom Slate Tile

__________________
Alabama Full Service Remodeling, Renovation, and Preservation by SLS Construction
Certified Energy Efficiency Audits, Ratings, Modeling, Verifications, & Consulting
Residential, Commercial, & Industrial Infrared Thermography Scans

ChrWright

Thanks. That's exactly the kind of info I was interested in.

So hyphenating for keyword separation isn't necessary?

__________________

Christopher Wright, CR: President @ WrightWorks, LLC/President @ Central Indiana NARI, Named to the 2010 REMODELING Big50
www.WrightWorks.net - Facebook - Twitter - Carmel Remodeling
Indianapolis Kitchen Remodeling Contractor - You Can Get There From Here

mertens3d

I don't think i'd go with that naming scheme. If I remember correctly from my research, Google recommends using recognized names in your file names.

So i'd go with:

kitchen-remodel-kraftmaid-maple-09a.jpg (or somesuch)

then also add these tags to your image.
alt
longdesc
title


I think title is what ie8 is now using in place of the alt tag.

But yeah, don't overdue it...or you might get penalized. Use a name that you would want a human to recognize and understand without much more explanation. Make sense?

mertens3d

...also....i think the web is supposed to be case sensitive (although most browsers and email clients work around it)...anyway...i'd stick to all lower case file names.

mertens3d

ok...i can't post links yet.

Haven't used this yet, but you might check it out.

Free...for batch processing images

search microsfot for this /powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

SLSTech

Simple trick for you - go to google or Bing - type in "maplecabinet" in the pic area & see what pops up. All the search engine algorithms are used to misspellings, etc... but they still will find the data.

As they used to frown on dashes, underscores, no caps, etc... they had to design the software & algorithms to find places with the names all smashed together.

As for the caps issue - it is a problem for IE5 (possibly 6) and lower based browsers & software - are those your types of clients? I use caps more for readability for myself & haven't seen any issues that occur over it

__________________
Alabama Full Service Remodeling, Renovation, and Preservation by SLS Construction
Certified Energy Efficiency Audits, Ratings, Modeling, Verifications, & Consulting
Residential, Commercial, & Industrial Infrared Thermography Scans

OGStilts

Chris, great thread topic!

Sean, good feedback as usual.

Now I need to implement these ideas better. I always named my photos for easier tracking on my end (ie B01004.jpg, B02015.jpg, etc) but I realized a few months ago that I wasn't benefiting from the SEO that way. I just need to get off my butt and make these changes. Thanks guys.

__________________

Chicago Home Remodeling-
Chicago Luxury Builder- Basement Remodeling- Kitchen Remodeling-Chicago Bath Remodeling

Techie

try www.picnik.com

Hammer_Nail

First off, allot of people still don't have high speed internet service, so make sure the file size is not too high.

File names should be keywords relevant to the photo.

Add keyphrase image alts / html titles.

__________________
Illinois Window Service

mertens3d

ah...but...it's the results you want. So if you do your trick and look at the files that come up, I'll bet they are mostly either dashed file names (i.e. maple-cabinet) or they are associated with text (i.e. maple cabinet).

So yeah, the search engines will try to interpret what you put in, but it looks like it gives result priorities to easy to read file names and text.

To be fair, I didn't look close so could be wrong. Do you see any results in google's fist couple of pages that have file names like maplecabinet.jpg?

...gregory