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.

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.

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.

ScipioAfricanus said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

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.

dhall said:

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.

Click to expand...

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 said:

. 'Bathroom Remodeling Photos' brings me up on page one--which is pretty damn good for a generic, non local keyword search.

Click to expand...

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.

Mike Finley said:

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.

Click to expand...

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?

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.

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

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

So hyphenating for keyword separation isn't necessary?

SLSTech said:

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

Click to expand...

another opinion

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?

...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.

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

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

ChrWright said:

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

So hyphenating for keyword separation isn't necessary?

Click to expand...

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.

try www.picnik.com

Seo..

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.

:thumbup:

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

SLSTech said:

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.

Click to expand...