Some of my tips are relevant to anyone’s site.  Today’s tip is geared to my clients and other photographers in the room.  Sure, this applies to anyone but moreso if you’re “one of us.”

Okay, so you’re a photographer. What’s the most important thing to your business?  (Quick, say photos.)

Photos.

GOOD!  We’re on the same page.  Why are you here on this site? (Quick, say SEO!)

SEO.

You catch on very quickly. I like this game. So, are you optimizing your photos?

What do you mean optimizing?

Ok, check out this photo (click on it to make it larger)

When you optimize your images, you’re really looking for three things.

1) Use alt tags on all images.  Be descriptive but not spammy.  Google doesn’t like spammy.  Say what the image is of and live with that. Image tags aren’t the be-all of SEO but they’re a piece of a larger puzzle.  Don’t try to overdo it but make sure your images definitely have alternate text.

2) Name your images in a way that tells Google what’s in it.  If you look at the last circled item above, it’s the JPG title. MaineNewbornPhotos01.jpg  You have to call it something.  Why not give it a name that makes sense?  It’s a newborn photo. In Maine. Nothing spammy about telling Google what’s in the image.  Do this.

3) Tie your image’s alt tags into the title of the post.  I did an adequate but not amazing job on this particular post.  Newborn baby photos should tie into newborn portrait photos (sure, I’ll buy that) and the image name (mainenewbornphotos01.jpg) which is adequate but not perfect.

Simple?  Simple.  Should you go back and alt-tag old posts.  Yes, but do it as time permits. Again, it’s not a HUGE piece of the SEO puzzle. If you have albums to design, you should not go tag images. If you have weddings to edit, no, don’t go back and do SEO on image tags right now.  This is a project you can do in between time in the meantime.  When you DO have the time you should absolutely be doing this. On all new posts going forward you should absolutely be using alt-tags.

Thanks!

You’re welcome.