INSPIRATIONAL: Ranking high on Google images - How to break through the digital noise with meta-tagging

In the age of digital photography with ever lower and lower price points to entry into professional photography, a plethora of free Youtube tutorials that can blow the previously required learning curve to mastery of all things photography from years of hard toil assisting at the hands of jaded and underpaying veteran photogs, to a matter of weeks and free (or relatively cheap) distribution channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Wordpress, Tumblr, Flickr ) has lead to a glut of shoot-and-burn-weekend-warrior-photographers inundating an already overflowing ocean of imagery with cat and food photos. The question then becomes how does a potential client find your work, in a sea of over saturated cat pictures?

you could.....

Spend countless hours courting the editors and contributors to the gatekeepers of the digital age           (Reddit [link], Upworthy [link], Buzzfeed [link] Lost at e Minor [link] Arch Daily [link], The Design Files [link], TMZ [link] et al) in a effort to get some of your work to feature in their glossy back light illuminated feeds and provide some much needed inbound link boost to ones Google rank.

.

or......

Buy a bunch of inorganic Facebook likes, Instagram friends or Twitter followers to create pseudo social proof from sketchy companies.

or..... 

Create some guaranteed click bait and and include the words what happens next you won't believe!!/what happens next will change your life/what happens next will change who you look at [insert topic of click bait] forever.

or you could just......

Simply feed the Google image search beast with sizable and healthy doses of metadata in cooperation with a Google.+ account.  

Why pray should I do this? 

A: Google's image search algorithm loves metadata, exif data, alt tags, image titles and file name extensions.

A: It's free. all it cost you is your time which can be optimised using templates.

B: Most people are lazy, including photographers. Most photographers can't be bothered doing any of this, so simply by doing this you are putting yourself in front of all of your competition.

If you don't believe me, then believe this guy, his an expert...

Look much can be said of the benevolence (or lack there of) of Google behind it's motivations and desire for you to be be deeply ingrained in all of it's products. Personally I'm not a fan of biting the hand that feeds me so feeding more and more information about myself until Google knows you even better than I do want I'm going to purchase or search for doesn't seem like such a bad trade off right?

[Look a cute panda!]

Simply by feeding the beast I've got many of my Frank Gehry images in the top 30 images for the search terms of Frank Gehry Abstract when my blogs have less than 2000 hits and on inbound links from any notable gatekeeper let alone any other websites.

Matt Cutts from Google talks about the importance of Meta description tags. If Matt Cutts is talking about it, you know it's important. If in doubt, just ask yourself the question, what would Matt Cutts do?

HOW pray do I go about this ? 

Glad you asked. Six things are key

1. Exif Data - Metadata - Key Wording  

Why not spend a few minutes doing this, on top of the hours you spent retouching the finely crafted images that nobody will ever see, because you didn't give Google a reason for people to see it. Heck, you can even save yourself a lot of work and just create a template and batch process it, across all the relevant images.

How to do it in Adobe Bridge

in Adobe Light room

In Adobe Photoshop
'

Remember be sure not to tick the remove all ICC profile /data box when you save for web in Photoshop, as it will undo all the good exif data work you have done.

2. The File Name 

When saving the image, make sure you include key words describing the image in the file name, using  a  " - "  to separate each word. Avoid making the title too long have no more than six words.

3. Alt Tags, Image Title and Description 

Once you import the image into your webpage, blog, Tumblr, it's time to add alt tags, image title and description to it.

How to do it in Wordpress

4. Size of the Image 

As far as Google is concerned, bigger is better. Bigger images thus rank higher. Now I know a photographer's worst nightmare is to have an unwatermarked image of theirs snatched from them and plastered on everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs without receiving a cent of compensation from the clear breach of copyright. But just remember for a second you're not Alberto Korda

                              


or this guy

so just take a chill pill. You don't need to put up a full res images just something around the 1000 to 1400 pixels for the long edge will be plenty big.

5. Make Images Pinnable  

Whatever you think of Pintrest, there are people using it including magazine editors, architects interior designers, art directors as well as your garden variety bridezillas i.e the very people who are going to buy your iamges and purchase your services. you got to go to where your customers are.

Here is how to do it in Blogspot

6. Have a mug shot via Google + 

It's becoming more common, although the odds are, if people are deciding between 10 different sites that Google has spewed up, chances are that they are going to click on the link, with a face beside it or at least goes the theory of social proof. whilst on the topic of social proof having client recommendations of you works just as well so put them up as well .

That is the theory. Here is the practice 

                                     

I don't think the feature will work as well once everyone has caught onto this trick.

Here is how to make that happen...

 

In closing.... 

Remember if all else fails, just heed the dulcet and sultry tones of the SEO rapper