So you have chosen your images carefully. You have even re-sized and adjusted the quality for better fit in the pages. And now it's time that you optimize them for the web. And you can do it better when you combine the whole thing with using text.
Basically, the robots (computer programs) that compile pages for rankings don't see what the image actually see the contents of the images. Thus, they don't know whether the actual picture is relevant or not to the list. Instead, they look into the words that refer to this images for relevancy. So, you need to work on these text in order to make your images more prominent. Text optimization is also very helpful for the people who uses the images, since it will make search much easier.
Here are some tips that you can use in improving the text that come along with your site's images.
The first thing that you need to tweak is your images' file names. This is especially important if you want the search engine to rank a particular image directly. The best thing here is to go straightforward with you file name. If, for example, you have a picture of a dog, then name your file dog.jpg (or any other extension, depending on the image type).
In case you want to be more specific, you can do so by using a more specific word for your file name, for example, naming the breed of the dog above. This will be useful in limiting the search for your image. However, never use obscure names, as these are likely to be overlooked by users not familiar with them.
You can also be more descriptive in your image's file name by using a phrase instead of a single word. For example, you can name the picture howling-dog.jpg to describe its contents. Never forget to use hyphens in between the words as these are easier to track for robots and to recall by people.
You can also use captions to further increase the prominence of your image. One thing that you should remember when putting in a caption is to be very concise while being descriptive to make good use of it. Here, you can also make use of keywords that you want to optimize for the image. Alternative, you can increase both the caption's and the image's prominence by using the same word that you used in the image's file name in the caption. By doing so, both the caption and the image will appear in the same time when queried. Be a little creative on this one though to avoid the caption looking like a visible file name.
You can also improve the descriptions of your images by making good use of the alt (title when using Firefox) attribute in the image tag of your site HTML codes. This is actually a must, as the alt attribute will display text that describes the image in case it doesn't appear due to some error. When putting a comment on the alt tag, never use the same ones that you have already used for the caption or the file name. Instead, use the alt tag to put in additional information not included in the caption. This way, not only are you able to expand your keywords list, but you actually give more information to your readers.
Done right, the words that accompany your images will greatly help in getting them in the rankings and this in turn, will give your site the needed boost.
