Some 37 Golden Nuggets ago we told you websites with absolutely clueless concepts of SEO might be able to rank higher than your own site. Google is trying hard to balance out the search results between random quality content and websites that try hard to be in the top 10.
Other than writing content and managing your on page and off page optimization factors, you could also try and place yourself into other areas of Google's search engine.
At the top right of Google's website you always see options for the different search types: Web, Images, Video, Maps, News and Shopping.
The Web search is naturally the most popular. Video Search includes results from various video websites. Maps and News search results require in-depth conversations on their own.
That leaves Google Image search, and this search should be easy to get into if you follow a few simple rules.
Most of the time the images you upload to your jewelry product catalog are names like PIC001234.JPG, or maybe the image names match the jewelry SKU, like 100-234.jpg. From an SEO point of view, these images are completely worthless and will rarely get absorbed into Google's image search.
Although there is a program called Google Goggles which can identify photographs, this only works on smartphones and even then only for well known items and landmarks that Google engineers have fed into the system. Google search can't distinguish the difference between a photo of a brilliant diamond ring and a brilliant day at the beach.
Google needs signals to create a correlation between the photos it finds on a page and the surrounding content. As soon as this correlation is cinched, your images will be absorbed into Google Image Search.
Here's how to get your jewelry images absorbed into Google's Image Search.
1. Create a dedicated page on your website for your topic. Let's say "Engagement Rings Springfield." The page name should be "jewelrystore.com/engagement-rings-springfield.html"
2. Match the Page Title to the file name, i.e. "Engagement Rings Springfield."
3. Write a story on this page that includes details about buying an engagement ring in the town of Springfield (use your city name naturally) in your state. Real life engagement stories would be good, especially if you can weave in details about how you or your store helped the customer that also lived in Springfield. The story should be more than 400 words.
4. Add a few images whenever appropriate. If you are using your name then include a photo of yourself. Any time you mention details about a ring, include a photo of a ring, or a close-up of the ring if you are referring to specific small details.
5. All images should use both the alt and title attributes to tell screen-reading software and Google what the images are about. Example:
<img scr=“100-234.jpg”>
or the preferred method:
<img scr=“100-234.jpg” alt=“Engagement Rings” title=“Engagement Rings”>
6. Instead of using images from your product catalog you should copy and rename them specifically for this page. You need to match the image names to your page name. Examples:
Engagement-Rings-Springfield.jpg
Engagement-Rings-Springfield-NJ.jpg
Engagement-Rings-Springfield-New-Jersey.jpg
Engagement-Rings-Springfield-Jeweler.jpg
Engagement-Rings-Jewelry-Store-Springfield.jpg
The final image tag would then look like this:
<img scr=“Engagement-Rings-Springfield.jpg” alt=“Engagement Rings” title=“Engagement Rings”>
From all these steps, Google will see this:
File name: engagement-rings-springfield.html
Page name: Engagement Rings Springfield
Image name: Engagement-Rings-Springfield
Image attributes: Engagement Rings
The conclusion should be that all information and items on the page are related to engagement rings and your images should be indexed into Google Image Search for your local area.
Like all search engine optimization, this technique is not magic, just tedious.
We've used Google Webmaster Tools to monitor the results of this SEO tactic across a few websites. Images like the above engagement-rings-springfield.jpg are highly ranked for the local market and receive a few dozen impressions every month. They also get people to click.
In some great situations, we've even seen images with more than 1000 impressions with many clicks.
Give the technique a try. You won't be wasting your time.
