Negative SEO with Google Images

[JaredBroussard]

We have a client in the heavy equipment industry that is trying to "push down" images in a Google image search that are associated with an accident over ten years ago. This client has launched a new website, and we have applied the best practices of on-page SEO (page titles, unique meta-descriptions, alt-image tags, focused keyword targeting, etc.).

The challenge we have is with Google Image results. It seems the image results shown in the Google Image search rankings are often not inline with how images have been labeled in the alt-tag section. I have checked these images with the Moz Chrome extension, and I have often found the way the image is labeled in the alt-tag is not related to the search query made within the Google image search bar. I certainly may not be factoring in other weighted items when it comes to how images are ranked. Are there other ranking factors associated with Google Image results outside of the Alt-Image Tag? If so, what are those factors?

Our ultimate goal is to provide a strategy that would allow us to tag images within this specific sector that are relevant to this specific heavy equipment product, and at the same time, "push down" the rankings of the images that have a negative association to them. We certainly want to take the right approach here, and want to earn these rankings. However, the way Google ranks images seems to be a mystery of sorts.

Is there a specific strategy relevant to Google Image rankings that would fall inline with the challenge listed above? I appreciate any advice on this topic.

Thank you.

[DmitriiK]

Howdy.

The strategy is the same as Reputation Management. See where the ranked images are coming from (your website, other websites, social media etc), see the topics of those pages, and see the anchor text cloud for those pages.

Basically, besides the alt tag, it's topical and semantic correlation of the page, which is tied to the images as well. As far as I understand, if page ranks for the query, images on that page will rank as well (or at least will have a high chance).

Then start building links with proper anchor texts to other pages and websites, which you want it to rank for that query

Hope this helps.