Pandas and Penguins Eat Images?

Here’s a favorite of everyone who markets online.  Search engine optimization and images.  There are actually folks selling products telling you that you can get tons of free traffic by doing little hacks to images.  I hope you didn’t believe them.  Nonetheless, there are things you can do to your images to improve your search results.

But first, enough with the nice stuff.  Just because I’m a lady doesn’t mean I won’t tell you what I think.  And I think you are very thankless here.  Wayne has got used to the hundreds of you a day never saying a word in the comments, but I’m going to beat up on you, because I’m new here.

I’m mean really; what is your problem?  Everyone comes here and gets really amazing information that practically no one else publishes except in paid products, and you don’t have a single comment.  I’m shocked.  You all must be liberals or something.  I told Wayne I could get comments out of you, but it looks like people only come here with a broken keyboard.  Seriously, not even a hello.  Wow, you are a tough crowd.

OK, I got that out. Let’s get back to SEO and images.  This is important.  We don’t do “black hat” here, so don’t worry.  Wayne runs and SEO agency that does everything manually and legitimately so his clients never loose position.  They only gain; if you get the picture (no pun on this article intended).  So let’s look at the big picture 😆 .

Image SEO

In the world of Google Penguins and Pandas, and very demanding readers you simply cannot expect your website to win over others if you don’t use any images.  You’ve probably noticed we use an image on every post and page we make these days.

The fact is, if you take two web pages with identical quality content and one has a related image, and the other doesn’t the one with the image will be seen as the most authoritative.  It’s just the way it is.  The image can be presented via video or a still image.  Nonetheless, the image wins.

Also, search engines actually analyze your featured images.  Yes, they do!  Google can now tell with some degree of accuracy how original your image is.  Finding an existing image on Google (even if it is does not require royalty fees and commercial licensing), and putting it on your article does not work for originality to search engines!

I’ll even prove it.  Ever hear of a site called TinEye.com?  You can put your image in TinEye, and they will find other sites using that same image.  Try it.  You’ll see.

So to search engines, you are using old hack.  Search engines hate tired content, even images.  So don’t use other online images.

I’m reading your mind now, cause I’m a woman, and we can do that.  You think you will just use a small piece of the existing image and trick them; am I right?

Do this… go to a site called Light Shot.  Make a screen capture of a small part of an existing online image.  Then run it through TinEye.  Most of the time, TinEye will detect it.

What Can You Do if You Aren’t an Image Graphics Pro?

All this super sleuth online software still doesn’t mean you have to be a Photoshop expert.  Photoshop is way too expensive.  So here’s what you can do:

• Do a search for images you can legally use.  Don’t use ones that require licensing.  Check in creative commons if you can.
• Blow it up to full screen size of a standard laptop or desktop computer.  Your 15 to 19 inch size.
• With your hand held camera or your mobile phone camera, take you own snap shot and import it into your favorite free image software.  There are lots of them out there.  I use Paint.net and GIMP.  Add some filters, alter the sharpness, the brightness.  Add a layer.  Do a few minor changes.
• Re-save your new image, and now you can use it as your featured image.

On this website, we actually make the images in about 5 minutes.  The way we do it is with a program called The Logo Creator.  We have the image add on image packs and create new images in about 5 to 7 minutes.

So really, The Logo Creator is a better way to do it, but I thought you might want to know the way to do it for free, if you have the time to do all that.  The Logo Creator is dirt cheap, and works great.  No fancy Photoshop skills required, and it works on Macs, too.  Be sure to get the add ons, too.  It’s worth every penny.

Alright, tell us how you do it.  I want to hear from you.  Or do your fingers hurt too much to make a short comment?  See you next time.