Images and SEO
-
Hi,
I would like some opinions on the topic of using images for SEO.
I have come across a few sites that I see have very few backlinks, but have decent pagerank and seem to rank well for certain keywords. One such site I looked at had very little content other than tons of images (It was a joke blog that focussed on funny images, funny pics etc) and now I am starting to question whether hotlinking images assists in SEO? are there any benefits to having someone using one of your images (hosted on your site) ?
I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link.
Any truth in this?
-
Thanks for the answer, but If we took pagerank out of the equation and just focus on whether linking to an image provides any type of benefit, would a site be able to rank based on a high number of backlinks to images as opposed to pages?
-
True, if it's a person's website but everything is shared socially now and people do it all the time on FB and it can be a great traffic driver if you force them to paste the URL instead of just the image path.
-
Well hang on a second here before everyone excited about hotlinking helping you in SEO and rankings.
If someone is hotlinking to an image on your site, even if it passes PR the PR is going nowhere because it's an image, not a webpage. There are no links on an image for the PR to pass to the rest of your site.
Optimizing your image with proper name and alt tag will help on page SEO and also help that image rank better in google image searches. If your image ranks good in google image search it could bring traffic to your site. Some shady sites know this and use scripts to automatically redirect the user to their website after clicking on that image in google image search - look at the bullet hole tattoo example
If your site is all about images then i would disable hotlinking and i would watermark all of your images in case someone wants to lift them at least your domain name is on them and you might get type thru traffic while also dicouraging someone from scarping your entire site and stealing your pictures for their site.
-
Maybe if they can't hotlink your images they simply link to you?
or steal your image and host it somewhere else?
It's a toss up. Obviously I would prefer a link, but realistically speaking, the chances of someone linking to your page because they cant embed an image from your site to theirs is pretty slim at best IMO.
-
I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link.
I have hotlinking blocked via .htaccess on one of my sites. It's been blocked for years because LOTS of people were hotlinking my images and we use terrabytes of BW without their help. With that in place I don't feel that I have any trouble getting the website to rank.
Maybe if they can't hotlink your images they simply link to you?
-
Forgot to mention that point, thank you Jarno
-
In addition to Jason's comment: Also make sure that if your use habedi (for example) as a keyword that you want to target, make sure you save your image file as habedi.jpg or png or something. But make sure you include that keyword in the file name. It really helps (even if it's just a very very little bit).
Regards
Jarno
-
Yes, images do help in the search engine results and often get displayed as part of an image search, where Google gives you the options of images as your search. However, do make sure that the alt tags are done correctly, and that your link points to something you want to. If you want to fully optimize it add a description and a caption, it never hurts.
The thing to be aware of though, most of the time the images will rank as opposed to the page the image is on. So there is the other half of the coin. Images can always help. Just be careful of where you link it to. Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can Image Quality In Online Store Effect Main Site SEO?
My client is building a new shopping cart that will be mobile friendly BUT will have terrible image quality - tiny images, with text on them. How will these tiny images impact the SEO on the main site? Should they put the store on the mainsite.com or on a subdomain (store.mainsite.com)? Does google see subdomains as part of the main site? I would think that having thousands of shopping product pages could be beneficial to the main site SEO, as long as the images don't negate the content. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jerrico10 -
Image upload SEO tips?
Is there anything I can do to my images other than naming them correctly to have with SEO? Size? File type? Maybe adding text on top of them to pick up OCR? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
Broken images & Rankings
Hi I have seen a big drop in a keyword going from position 3 to out of the top 100. The only thing I can see that went wrong, was an issue with broken images - could this be the reason for the drop? Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Yoast or Premium SEO Pack?
Which one is better Yoast or premium SEO pack excluding that one is paid & other is free. Because when we are doing SEO $39 doesn't make a huge difference as compared to the work we do right? Which one will you suggest out of the two?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Mobile SEO? Do we need it or not?
Hi Guys, I am about to start to redesigning a new mobile website and am curious if mobile SEO is actually having an affect or not. The site I am doing the redesign for, already has a very well optimized desktop site and has an existing mobile website with no optimization. The mobile website is ranking well in Mobile search so I am curious why I I would need to optimize the new mobile website properly, especially when the mobile website has a canonical tag for its desktop counter part? Love to get everyone's thoughts on this & where they see mobile SEO going in the next 12 months.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seekjobs0 -
How to Implement Massive SEO Modifications
Hi everyone, I'm implementing some fairly significant changes on a clients website and wanted to know if it was better to implement all the changes at once or if I should implement the changes gradually. The changes are: 1. Amended information architecture 2. Completely new URL's 3. New meta data and some new on page content 4. Meta robots 'no index, follow' approximately 90% of the site Can I make all these changes in one go (that would be my preference), or should I gradually implement? What are the risks? Many thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesjackson1 -
What are the best joomla seo plugins?
When optimizing a joomla site what is the best plugins etc for seo tweeking
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Expiring URL seo
a buddy of mine is running a niche job board and is having issues with expiring URLs. we ruled it out cuz a 301 is meant to be used when the content has moved to another page, or the page was replaced. We were thinking that we'd be just stacking duplicate content on old urls that would never be 'replaced'. Rather they have been removed and will never come back. So 410 is appropriate but maybe we overlooked something. any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | malachiii0