Driving Traffic With Google Images

[Randy]

Sometimes having an image that ranks really well for a phrase can make you the default #1 result in the main results for a query. (Because of Google's new "universal search".) Today when I did searches for "annie duke" and "pamela anderson" in Google, I got a row of images after the first four results from the "Image results from Google". So yes, this is a valid channel to optimize for, but not every channel is as profitable as every other channel either.

Google Images is only one example of a search channel that you can tap into besides the main results set. Someone who learns how to do specialty SEO for various search channels can find remarkably non-competitive and profitable queries to rank for. A lot of poker affiliates, myself among them, focus so much on optimizing for the main results that they don't do near enough optimization for other channels.

[PokerProp]

Randy's point here is extremely valid so much so I wish he didn't post it . I've been ranking well for images right along for this purpose.
I'm not sure how much it will do for most poker affiliates but for celebrity news and entertainment type sites having the top image spot brings in lots of traffic. The page view is lower but I had a site doing 18K hits from images per month with 2.4 page view per visitor and just under 2 min average view time. This is great for images because there are also those that steal it in 5 seconds and leave so there are others staying a while and viewing lots of pages.

[mypokercorner]

Originally Posted by Sebastien

Do any of you know how to make pictures rank highly in Google Images ? Is it all a question of backlinks as in the SERPS ?

I'm in 5th position in GIS for "poker hands" and I've never done anything to promote the page it's on. I have no links to it. But google picked it up and put it up there. I get a lot of hits from it. I have no idea why it ranked that high. Divine intervention? Who knows. I like it the way it is!

[TheShortStack]

I think ALT tags and image names will help, and Google possibly will look at the text surrounding the image to get an idea of what it's about.

Maybe the domain names helps a bit too, although I'm starting to guess now ...

[pokerforfree]

When doing a search for "xxx-poker logo", many times images of mine appear in the top 10 GIS results. I do get some traffic because of it, but not something to call home about.

Question to Randy: Do you get link value when someone deep-links an image from your site in his blog?

[Randy]

I don't really know, but I would guess not.

Originally Posted by pokerforfree

When doing a search for "xxx-poker logo", many times images of mine appear in the top 10 GIS results. I do get some traffic because of it, but not something to call home about.

Question to Randy: Do you get link value when someone deep-links an image from your site in his blog?

[wallstreeterww]

Alt tags do help but if you overdo them, u can get hit with a penalty. Just make sure everything looks natural on your site.