SEO Basics: Using Keywords With Your Photos

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In a recent post, I explained how keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization, also known as “SEO.” You can read that here, if you missed it.

To give you a quick refresher, when you use keywords in your blog post titles, blog post tags, and in the text of your blog post, you are helping the search engines find you. When they find you, they’ll place your blog in the search engine results.

Let’s say you wrote a blog post about caring for vintage clothing and you used the phrase “washing vintage clothing.” When someone searches will see that you have used that phrase and they will put your blog post in the search results. The closer you are to the top, the better, as most people will not look past the third page of the search results.

In addition to adding keywords to your titles, tags, and text, you can also add them to your photos! Optimizing your photos will give you a little “seo push” that can go a long way.

The first step is to find the keyword or phrase that you will be using. I like to use Google’s Keyword Tool. It provides a lot info and it’s free. In the previous post I mentioned, I include instructions on how to find keywords.

I’ll pick up where I left off in that post. We already found the term “washing vintage clothing,” so now it’s time to find the right photo.

If you don’t have a photo of your own to use, you can find a photo on the web. I like to use  DepositPhotos.com. They are low-cost and royalty free, which means you do not owe any future money to the photographer, can use the image more than once without paying again and again – and you don’t even have to give any credit to the photographer. You are essentially buying quite a few rights to the image.

Once you’ve found the perfect photo and have purchased it, you’ll download it to your computer. Instead of using the generic file name the image seller gave it, change the file name to the keyword phrase you will be using in your blog post. In this case, it would be “washing-vintage-clothing.jpeg”

Once you write your blog post and insert your image, you can future optimize it by adding a title to your photo and alt text, also known as “alternative text.” The instructions for this will vary, depending on which blogging platform you use, for example WordPress, Blogger, etc.

All of this can be done in your “edit photos” area. If you’re not sure where that it is, look at the help section of your blogging platform.

Once you do this a few times, you’ll get the hang of it and you’ll see just how quick and easy it can be!

Have you been optimizing your photos for your blog or website all along?

By Crissy Herron, www.IndieBizChicks.com

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