Pictures in posts ranking high in G's images

JayyC

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Aug 10, 2010
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I have a site that I've neglected for the most part, aged maybe 3 years or so. It's in a niche that I'm actually passionate about and thinking about reviving it in the coming months.

I've looked over the analytic data for the past month and I've noticed almost every article has it's own picture that I've included rank pretty high in G, usually in the top 3 images for a medium/highly competitive keyword, but the article itself just gets 10-15 long tails a day, which are usually listed N/A. The image itself gets anywhere from 80 to 900 impressions a day, depending on the article that I built the keyword/keywords around, but of course almost zero clicks as well.

Not that the images are worth anything to click on themselves, I'm just curious on how I'm "accidentally" making this happen? My on-page on each article is pretty good, but my link profile isn't anything to brag about, since it's mostly been neglected and put on the back burner for my my other churn and burn sites the last few years.

Just looking for some insight from someone that actually tries to purposely rank images for whatever reason so I can understand what's actually happening here, since I can't identify a pattern across my articles that's making the images rank. Debated on putting this in T/C but felt this is something I should have already understood so I stuck it in the newbie section instead.
 


I've found a lot of people seem to neglect images, making it quite easy to rank with them.

For example, instead of naming the image "widget xy.jpg" people will upload it with the auto-generated name like DSC01234.jpg or maybe even rename it "big pic 08.jpg". So if you name the image appropriately, add alt text and description (I tend to vary the three and not just use "widget xy" for all fields: example alt text = "review of widget xy" and description = "if you need a widget, model xy may be the one you need - find out more") you will often rank well for the image. At least in my experience, but I'm not in payday loan type niches.

It's not that I particularly want to rank for the image, it's more about the on-page SEO for me.
 
I have a site that I've neglected for the most part, aged maybe 3 years or so. It's in a niche that I'm actually passionate about and thinking about reviving it in the coming months.

I've looked over the analytic data for the past month and I've noticed almost every article has it's own picture that I've included rank pretty high in G, usually in the top 3 images for a medium/highly competitive keyword, but the article itself just gets 10-15 long tails a day, which are usually listed N/A. The image itself gets anywhere from 80 to 900 impressions a day, depending on the article that I built the keyword/keywords around, but of course almost zero clicks as well.

Not that the images are worth anything to click on themselves, I'm just curious on how I'm "accidentally" making this happen? My on-page on each article is pretty good, but my link profile isn't anything to brag about, since it's mostly been neglected and put on the back burner for my my other churn and burn sites the last few years.

Just looking for some insight from someone that actually tries to purposely rank images for whatever reason so I can understand what's actually happening here, since I can't identify a pattern across my articles that's making the images rank. Debated on putting this in T/C but felt this is something I should have already understood so I stuck it in the newbie section instead.

Since its not articles that ranks in google, you should compare images and whats the difference between them. You will find answer Philip already gave you a hint.
 
just place your images in relevant text, give it seo friendly file name, add alt and title attributes.
 
I think this depends very very much on the search terms, keywords and intent. People search for images for many different reasons and its much easier to get impressions. The algos used for displaying images are therefore of course different.
 
Maybe just count your blessings without questioning it. Possibly you've found a loophole with Google. Just get in there and duplicate your success with other images on new posts, before Google closes yet another window.