Retaining Image Search Rankings After Migration

[nezona]

Hi There,

I have a client with a very interesting dilemma out there. If you do an image search his images appear quite high in the rankings. However the way he achieved this isn't exactly within Google's guidelines. He is basically hiding the images within CSS. The reason behind this is that the pages have changed over the years and the images didn't fit in with the new existing text but he still wanted to maintain the high image search rankings.

He is now changing to a brand new site and so this page he has been able to tweak successfully before, will no longer exist. He want's to know what is the best way to maintain his image search rankings. will a 301 redirect be enough?

I know the morality issues of hiding images, but I want to know if he did what would be the best way to preserve his current image rankings.

Kind Regards

Neil

[Alex-Harford]

Does he benefit from the images ranking so highly? I haven't seen many studies where image clicks result in good traffic, especially in terms of revenue if it's an e-commerce site.

It seems a strange way of doing things. Are you saying the images don't match the text content of the page? The context an image is placed in can help it rank, so it seems strange that these images are ranking based on their historical context. Google reads CSS so should see that the images are hidden. Unless you're blocking Google from seeing the CSS which is now against Google's Webmaster Guidelines: https://plus.google.com/+PierreFar/posts/TLeHSDRwjhB

If you're not blocking Google from the CSS, all other things being equal, then 301 redirects of the page and images could be enough, though I wouldn't be surprised if the rankings drop as from the information you've given (and assuming they're relatively competitive keywords) I'm surprised the rankings have remained for so long! The best way to preserve the image rankings would be to have the images on a page with relevant content.