Images and SEO

[rightmove]

Hi,

I would like some opinions on the topic of using images for SEO.

I have come across a few sites that I see have very few backlinks, but have decent pagerank and seem to rank well for certain keywords. One such site I looked at had very little content other than tons of images (It was a joke blog that focussed on funny images, funny pics etc) and now I am starting to question whether hotlinking images assists in SEO? are there any benefits to having someone using one of your images (hosted on your site) ?

I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link.

Any truth in this?

[Asher]

Yes, images do help in the search engine results and often get displayed as part of an image search, where Google gives you the options of images as your search.  However, do make sure that the alt tags are done correctly, and that your link points to something you want to. If you want to fully optimize it add a description and a caption, it never hurts.

The thing to be aware of though, most of the time the images will rank as opposed to the page the image is on. So there is the other half of the coin. Images can always help. Just be careful of where you link it to.  Hope this helps!

[JarnoNijzing]

In addition to Jason's comment: Also make sure that if your use habedi (for example) as a keyword that you want to target, make sure you save your image file as habedi.jpg or png or something. But make sure you include that keyword in the file name. It really helps (even if it's just a very very little bit).

Regards

Jarno

[Asher]

Forgot to mention that point, thank you Jarno

[EGOL]

I do recall reading somewhere that someone hotlinking an image is akin to a link.

I have hotlinking blocked via .htaccess on one of my sites.   It's been blocked for years because LOTS of people were hotlinking my images and we use terrabytes of BW without their help.  With that in place I don't feel that I have any trouble getting the website to rank.

Maybe if they can't hotlink your images they simply link to you?

[rightmove]

Maybe if they can't hotlink your images they simply link to you?

or steal your image and host it somewhere else?

It's a toss up. Obviously I would prefer a link, but realistically speaking, the chances of someone linking to your page because they cant embed an image from your site to theirs is pretty slim at best IMO.

[irvingw]

Well hang on a second here before everyone excited about hotlinking helping you in SEO and rankings.

If someone is hotlinking to an image on your site, even if it passes PR the PR is going nowhere because it's an image, not a webpage. There are no links on an image for the PR to pass to the rest of your site.

Optimizing your image with proper name and alt tag will help on page SEO and also help that image rank better in google image searches. If your image ranks good in google image search it could bring traffic to your site.  Some shady sites know this and use scripts to automatically redirect the user to their website after clicking on that image in google image search - look at the bullet hole tattoo example

https://www.google.com/search?q=best+tattoos&hl=en&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=EjPwUJW8IcW6kQXZ6IHADA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=1920&bih=910

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1920&bih=910&tbm=isch&tbnid=hSAsZ2NTvO53-M:&imgrefurl=http://tattoostyles1.com/best-tattoos/&docid=-PGBMcnFFHCldM&imgurl=http://tattoostyles1.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/best-tattoo-4.jpg&w=550&h=550&ei=yjLwUOm_O8zOkgXk84GgBw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=557&sig=105399590545317518308&page=1&tbnh=137&tbnw=138&start=0&ndsp=67&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:150&tx=92&ty=84

If your site is all about images then i would disable hotlinking and i would watermark all of your images in case someone wants to lift them at least your domain name is on them and you might get type thru traffic while also dicouraging someone from scarping your entire site and stealing your pictures for their site.

[irvingw]

True, if it's a person's website but everything is shared socially now and people do it all the time on FB and it can be a great traffic driver if you force them to paste the URL instead of just the image path.

[rightmove]

Thanks for the answer, but If we took pagerank out of the equation and just focus on whether linking to an image provides any type of benefit, would a site be able to rank based on a high number of backlinks to images as opposed to pages?