Google Images - Photographers need them!

If you are a photographer, and you do business on the web, you will want to see Google Images as your friend, and a good way to show off your photography.   It is a good idea to see what Google Images has listed from your site.  It may surprise you what they have added from your site.

To see what Google Images has indexed from your site, go to https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi and do a search for site:domain.com and replace domain.com with the domain name of your website.  For example, if I want to see what images are indexed for http://www.geekswithcameras.com then I would type site:geekswithcameras.com in the search box.

You should see pictures from your site as the result of the search.  If you see no pictures, or if you are only seeing navigational icons, you need to work on your site to get your pictures indexed in Google images.

You may be asking yourself, why do I want my pictures indexed in Google Images.  There are two main reasons you want to have Google index your photography.

First, a lot of people search the web using Google images.  You will want your photography showing up when people search for photography in your category.  It will drive traffic to your site and also open you to a market that you may not find in another way.

Second, there are some sites that use these pictures when discussing or showing details of your site.  An example of a site that does this is http://www.prosphotos.com.  ProsPhotos.com is a Photography Website directory that allows photographers to add their photography related websites.  On their details page for each site, they include a Google Images search.  Here is an example of one of those pages: http://www.prosphotos.com/detail/detail/camera-market-australia-2324.html

If you have done the Google search and find no images or the images you find are not the ones that you want to show up, there are several things you can do to your site to make the images you want show up in the Google Search.

The main thing you can do is modify your site and use the following guidelines to help improve your sites ability for Google to index your images.

• Use real file names.  Don’t upload your pictures with the standard camera file names.  Change the files names to include something that identifies what the photograph contains.  Instead of the standard IMG_3972 name, use something like Mount_Rushmore_Photograph_3972.
• Add the alt attribute to your img tag on your page.  Most Blog software allow you to add an alt tag or description to your photography.  Add this tag and include a description of what is in the picture.
• Add pictures to your other pages.  If you have a about-us page.  Add one of your favorite photographs to that page by embedding it with an img tag on that page.
• Add descriptive text and links around your pictures.  Don’t just post your picture on a page, make sure you include information about that picture on that same page.  You may also want to add information on the equipment used, this could also help Google add your photo in a search for photography taken using that equipment.

Google support also has some good suggestions.  You can watch a video about this at this location: http://support.google.com/images/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175288

They also have some additional suggestions here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=114016