Currently 15% of the referral traffic to Charles & Hudson is originating from Google image searches and is only second in referrals to Google organic search. It jumps to 18% when I add in Bing and Yahoo! image search. That’s a significant amount of traffic that many blogs and corporate websites are leaving on the table.
Often ignored by enterprise level content management systems, image naming on corporate websites leave much to be desired. Vogue.com launched last week and the website looks great (except for the pop-up that won’t go away). But the main image slug on the homepage is named “http://www.style.com/images/vogue/homepage/hp_primary.jpg”. It’s a photo rich with imagery including a handbag, shoes, skirt, and a model. Is it the fault of the CMS that CondeNast employs which makes it difficult to name images with keyword rich names? In this situation I’d say no since someone did name this image “hp-primary.jpg” and it’s not just a random image name generator such as “in38sfeafe.jpg” which often times is the case.
So why did they name it “hp-primary.jpg”? I guarantee you that image will never appear in a relevant search request. Even when an attempt at naming an image is made the format leaves much to be desired. For example this image of an up and coming model “http://www.style.com/blogs/voguedaily/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/antonella.jpg” contains only a first name. Another opportunity missed as her full name could possibly be a hot keyword. Of course other factors come into play in search relevancy including on page text and titles but why leave that to chance. Name the image the models full name using a dash or underscore between the names.
Conde Nast is far from the only mainstream media giant that has chosen to ignore the small details but they are a great example of a company with the resources and desire to compete in search for hot topics but will continue to fall short unless they apply some basic SEO techniques across their website. This has to start with SEO training for not only tech types but more importantly editors and producers.
Not to be forgotten is also providing meta-data to each image using the alt-image tag. This tag provides users who have their images turned off or browse by sound with image information but for you it offers another opportunity to properly describe the image that in turn will have a positive effect on your search results.
