How To Optimize Images for SEO and Social Sharing

Your social media channels, like Facebook and Pinterest, can be used to entertain and build relationships using valuable content.  This week, I’ll share two secrets to help optimize your images for search engines (SEO) and one for creating shareable content.

1.  Use keywords in Picture and Video file names.  

Have you ever named a photo or video generically, like photo1.jpeg or video4352.MP4?  When including photos on your website and blog, give the photo or video a file name optimized with relevant keywords about the image. If you don’t, you’re missing an easy SEO opportunity.   When search engines crawl websites, they can’t tell what a photo depicts, so they rely on the title of the photo. I also include relevant key words in the Alt title of images.  Below is a picture of the cover of our ebook Integrated Facebook Marketing for Business.  Here’s how we optimized the title of this picture.  The book was written to help small business owners with their Facebook marketing, so we used this mission in the title of the picture.

Picture file name: mymarketingcafe_facebook_small_business_marketing.jpeg.

2.  Include hyperlinks to help with SEO.  

External websites that link back to your website help with SEO.  When posting photos or videos to external sites like your blog, Facebook and Pinterest, include relative links to your website. 

Blogs – When uploading a photo to a blog, ensure the file name is optimized with keywords relevant to the image.  When blogging as a guest blogger, include a photo and create a relevant hyperlink on the photo back to your site.  (click the ebook photo to the left as a hyperlink example.)

Pinterest – When pinning a photo from your website to Pinterest, instead of uploading the photo, pin from the page on your website that has the photo. (Ensure when you put the photo on your website that you’ve optimized the file name with keywords relevant to the picture.)  When the photo is repinned, your link is repinned, giving more exposure to your website.

Facebook – When posting a photo to Facebook, if the photo is from content on your website, share it by creating a status update and then linking to the webpage that has the picture.  Like this blog for example, the sunrise photo is nice shareable content. I’ll share it by linking to this blog post URL in my status update.  However, when you do upload a photo to Facebook, include a detailed description that includes a relevant link back to your website.  Not on every photo, but definitely photos from events, or those related to content on your website.  See how the description on this example Facebook cover photo ties in with the photo, and includes a link to relative information?

3.  Create content that people want to share. 

Is your website loaded with information people want to share?  It can be from adding a FAQ page (about your product or industry), or a list of resources page, or a helpful tips page.  At myMarketing Cafe, we offer a Resource Stand that includes tons of information relevant to marketing.  Regardless of your industry, you can create a page like this on your website and load it with valuable, helpful information that is important to your audience. Then, direct your audience to your webpage using social media updates on Facebook, a status update on LinkedIn, posting a discussion in your groups on LinkedIn, and writing a blog post on your blog, etc.  This strategy will get people in your circle forwarding the information and visiting your website.  It establishes your site as a go-to resource, and it helps you build outside links to your website.

If you’ve found these tips helpful, share them of course!  Let me know if I can help get you started.