How To Use Images, Graphics And Thumbnails To Promote Your Site

Images, graphics and thumbnails play an important role in
the overall look and feel of your website. They can greatly
improve the usefulness of your site; making it more
user-friendly and easier to navigate. More importantly,
the visual images on your site can be optimized to improve
your search engine rankings.

Despite their importance, many webmasters ignore images or
graphics when it comes to optimizing their web pages. Don't
make the same mistake.

There are some simple rules to follow when using SEO with
your onsite graphics. Here are a few tips:

First, you must know exactly what an 'Alt Image Tag' is in
order to optimize for the search engines. You must also
realize search engine robots can't see your images, they
can only read text - the text in your Alt Image Tags. So
you have to construct your Alt Image Tags with this factor
in mind and feed these robots with your popular keywords.
Search engine robots usually spider popular sites every day
or so.

What is an Alt Image Tag?

Every image, graphic or thumbnail on your site will have
html code similar to this:

<[sample code] img
src="http://www.YourDomain.com/images/logo.jpg" Alt="Your
Keyword Image" width="600" height="200" [sample code]>

Your Alt Image Tag will be:

alt="Your Keyword Image"

Always include an Alt Image Tag description for all your
images, graphics and thumbnails. This includes all headers,
background images and even thumbnails of other sites, if
you use them. Keep your descriptions of the images short
and related to the image itself. It would be a good idea to
end each description with the word photo, image or graphic.

Many marketers like to include their main keyword or
keyword phrase they are targeting in the Alt Image Tag.
They also place this keyword phrase in the text on their
page, in the title tag, meta description and many alert
marketers also place their keyword phrase in the URL of
that page. You should also include your keyword phrase in
the last 25 words on the same page.

Feed the spiders but be careful!

DON'T repeat the same keyword or keyword phrase numerous
time on your page in the image tags - this may be seen as
keyword spamming by the robots.

Using plurals and variations of your keyword is fine, such
as: faxing service, fax services, efax services.

Many marketers also use misspelled keywords in the Alt
Image Tag as it can only be seen when the image is scrolled
over. Spiders can't spell but they will index these
misspelled keywords and bring in extra traffic!

Graphics

The ordinary website will have more than just photos or
images on a webpage. You will have headers, backgrounds,
liners, etc. all of these should also have Alt Image Tags.
Although in this age of the broadband Internet, your page
loading time is not a major factor as it once was, but you
should still reduce all your images so that they will
download quickly.

Many professional web designers place unneeded or useless
keywords (ones that get no searches) in the graphics on
their site. For example, instead of placing 'Welcome to our
site' in a headline - place it in a graphic at the top of
your page. This will free up your headline for your main
keywords.

Placing these useless words in a graphic where the robots
can't read them - frees up your Alt Tags for keywords that
you're promoting. Place your main keywords in the headline
for better SEO. Keep feeding those spiders!

But always keep in mind, you are creating your content or
web pages for real live human beings so you should check to
see what your site's graphics look like in the different
browsers. Try here: www.anybrowser.com

Since we have an ever increasing numbers of different
screen or display sizes, always check to see how your
graphics look on a different size display. You might be
horrified to find your perfectly designed page on a 15" PC
is totally distorted on a 17" widescreen laptop.

Needless to say, for site consistency, keep all your
background images and logos the same throughout your site.
Same goes for your fonts and text size, it will keep your
site's visitors more focused and on track.

Thumbnails

Many online sites use thumbnails to raise the professional
quality of their sites. It makes for a higher standard of
design, not to mention, it will increase the usability of
your site. It will also increase your click thru rates.

Thumbnails are screen capture shots of a website. They give
the surfer some idea of what a site looks like before they
visit that site. In a billion site Internet, this can be
very important for the promotion of your site.

Using thumbnails will increase the visibility of your site
and make it stand out from the crowd. Many professional
sites like AOL, Network Solutions, and ALexa use
thumbnails. Any site can use thumbnails, check the resource
box at the end of this article for further directions on
how to place thumbnails on your own site or sites.

Conclusion

Using images, graphics and thumbnails to promote your site
can be easily done if you use the advice given above.
Always remember to use Alt Image Tags to position your
selected keywords or keywords in the search engines.
Consistently do this over a long period of time and you
will see your site rise in the rankings. Keep those spiders
well fed and happy!

More importantly, using these visual aids will also improve
the friendliness and usability of your site. It will help
raise the professional look and feel of your site so that
other webmasters and sites will want to link to your site;
further increasing your rankings and the popularity of your
site.

Don't underestimate the power of a simple image - it can do
wonders for your site.

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The author is a former teacher who now works full-time
online operating numerous websites, including two sites on
Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try:
http://www.marketingtoolguide.com
To place thumbnails or thumbshots on your own site, try
this free service. Go here:
http://www.thumbshots.org/articles.pxf
2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed
if this resource box stays attached.