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How Google DIVERTED 1,500+ Visitors To My Blog In 16 Hours…
By Terrance Charles | New Here? Subscribe To Blog RSS...
If you are into search engine marketing and optimization then you know that getting alot of traffic from the search engines isn’t that easy. There’s alot of factors that will determine how well you rank and how much traffic you gain from it, but what happened to me wasn’t all that complicated. Here’s what happened…
I optimize my blog with pictures whenever I post to it, but really I did not think that it was so important as far as the search engines go, because it’s just a picture. But to my amazement, just a picture is what landed me 1,500+ visitors in about 16 hours.
How Can Google Images Boost Your Blog Traffic?…
It wasn’t until I logged into my statistics area and noticed that my traffic had SPIKED as if I landed on the homepage of google. So I investigated it further and I saw that it was my images from my blog that was bringing in all this traffic.
The key is, it’s not just the image. It’s how you use the image. There’s couple things you can do keyword wise that when google indexes your page, it adds the picture to their image section, so that when people search through images, they’ll find yours by keyword.
Here’s 5 Ways To Make Your Images Effective…
#1 – Image Size – You want to avoid using images that are too large because they can turn off your readers by the loading time it can take, and the look of the image.
#2 – Title Tags/Alt Tags - The title tag for images are just as important as the title tag for a website. It describes the image and helps the search engine put it into a category, now this is one of the most important parts. In wordpress, when uploading a picture you can automatically add this into the picture.
#3 – Using a Descriptive Filename – Just like the title tag, this is another important element of optimizing your picture. If you have a golf image, you don’t want to just name it “gpicture” … You want to name it something like “golfswingimage” or “golfshoesimage” for example.
#4 – Use a Keyword Suggestion Tool – This step is very important. It’s how you find what people are already searching for, and even if it’s not in the image, they are still searching for it, so you stand a good chance at attracting traffic because of the keyword you chose. WordTracker.com is a great keyword suggestion tool with a free trial too.
#5 – Quality Of The Image – You may say what does this have to do with optimizing your image, but the quality of your image depends on wether it’s used or not. Once you have all the steps above downpact, this is the deciding factor on if your image get’s chosen. You don’t want distorted images, or images that has problems with being resized.
Another GREAT tip is to include your website URL on your image or make it to where you get credit for supplying the image, if it’s your image. The fact is most people will just “save the picture as” and you don’t get credit. You can set it up where in order to use the image, it requires some type of permission such as a link back to your site etc.
Using these main steps will make sure that your image get’s seen and direct more traffic to your website. If you didn’t think it was important, now you see why optimizing your images too has a impact on your website as a whole.
Any More Image Optimization Tips? Share It Below…
To The TOP,
Terrance Charles
TerranceCharles.com
Popularity: 99% [?]
Topics: Blog Marketing / Web 2.0, How-To's, Internet Marketing Tips, Search Engine Marketing, Web Traffic Generation | 9 Comments »
10:21 am on February 18th, 2008
[...] How Google Diverted 1,500+ Visitors To My Blog In 16 Hours… [...]
2:25 pm on February 18th, 2008
Hey Terrance,
I enjoyed reading your tips on optimization my images for Google. I’ll be sure to implement these strategies on all of existing websites.
Keep those awesome tips coming man!
Thanks and have a wonderful day.
[Reply]
10:19 pm on February 19th, 2008
I have also got some traffic from Google Image search from the methods above but not nearly 1500 uniques in 16 hours. Having a link around the image with the alt tag works great. Having all titles / alts / file names with the post slug seems to get the image in Google images too.
[Reply]
12:33 pm on February 20th, 2008
I’ve seen this happen once or twice on Small Business Branding, a blog I manage and I can tell you – it was damn exciting…
Good to find a post that verbalises this. I’ll work on adding descriptive images to more of my posts now.
[Reply]
11:22 pm on February 21st, 2008
Just curious… Do those people searching for images actually BUY anything?
[Reply]
11:33 pm on February 21st, 2008
Allan, you’re right to ask that question. I have to admit, when I’m searching for an image, I just want to grab the image and go. However, if the page loads fast enough, the visitor doesn’t have to scroll through a mess of other stuff to find the image, and the content is actually interesting, they just might convert into sales.
Even if they don’t. If you’re using exchanges, like BlogRush or Free-banners, then this junk traffic can still be used to generate targeted leads.
Also, adding images to your blog posts can really spice up the appearance of the entries by breaking up big chunks of text and giving the readers points of reference to help them keep track of their place in large articles. Images are very useful, we should all use them (I really should use them more often).
Terrance, you’ve done a great job explaining how something we should be doing for our readers anyhow can drastically increase traffic to our blogs. Well done.
[Reply]
1:31 am on February 22nd, 2008
Nice article, Thanks for the tips..
It will surely help getting more visitors.
[Reply]
7:15 pm on February 22nd, 2008
I haven’t seriously think of this one..^^..thanks for the idea Terrance..I’m gonna give this a shot!
[Reply]
9:14 pm on February 22nd, 2008
Hey Allan, Terrance here… That is a great
What I found that did happen was the
question
quality of the traffic was decent. I know when I
search for a image, I usually grab it and go, but
if the content catches my attention I stick around
for a bit to see what it’s all about.
Did it convert to sales for me? It converted more
sales I noticed than the normal when the traffic
came pounding in. But to capitalize on the traffic
I created a POPUNDER lead capture page on my blog
so that for people who grab and go there will be
a unblockable popunder offering them a free ebook
or service. It works even better when the image
is targeted to your offer.
Just a simple little popunder lead capture page
brought in much more blog subscribers and my
newsletter subscribers leading to signups, sales
and leads through autoresponder email. So, I would
definitely say that it works without a doubt.
If you don’t create some type of popunder lead
capture page or a image stamp aka watermark, then
the traffic will be poor quality, it all depends
on what you do to monetize this traffic.
[Reply]