Images are very important. They not only help your users determine the gist of what a site contains with a mere glance, but they also help make any website look a lot less boring. Of course the proper use of images is important to achieve maximum effect. However, aside from the user side another important contribution of images to a site is its effects on SEO. Images can help any site’s SEO effort but again, only if the proper steps are taken.

Below are some tips to ensure that your images help your SEO efforts and do not merely sit there looking pretty.

Store images in a single directory – What this does is it makes it easier for search engines to index all your images since there will only be one path to follow to find where they all are. An added bonus is that the images will be easier for the webmaster (or anyone else who needs access) to find and replace or do whatever needs to be done since they won’t be scattered all over the domain.

Use keywords in the file names – We all know the rule here use short but descriptive keywords. Don’t use senseless characters!

Use Alt text – Describe the image in the alt text but again keep it short and use keywords. you can use the file name for the alt text. Do this especially if you will be using the image as a link. According to Google you should consider the alt text in this case to be the anchor text… and we all know how important the anchor text is!

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URLs are very important in SEO not only because they’re what search engine spiders crawl but also because they appear in the SERPs, meaning that the contents factor in when determining the relevance of the web page to the user’s query. To make sure that the URLs of your site are optimised here are some tips you should remember:

Start with the directory structure – If your directory structure is a mess then it is harder to come up with good URLs, this is especially true for nested directory structures that go really deep. Make sure you organise your site structure first.

Use keywords in the URLs – Not only should you use keywords in your URL but you should avoid using numbers and other senseless characters. For bloggers this can actually be easy because most of the time the post title is used automatically as both the page title and as part of the URL, which means that you only need to come up with a good post title. For websites what can be done is to just use the page title as well but then you should come up with a good descriptive but precise title with the most important keywords.

Use a 301 redirect - What you want to achieve by doing this is to point users so that they end up accessing a page through one URL. Choose the URL you prefer and redirect all the other URL versions to that one. Make sure you also stay consistent and point to the same kind version (i.e. URLs with www at the beginning) for all pages.

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Here is the second half of the list that Andy Beard came up with regarding the best plug ins to use to remove the no follow tag.

• Link Love – this is a brand new plugin that removes nofollow after a certain number of comments have been made – this rewards regular commenters – one thing I like is that the detection is based upon email address and not domain or URL, so it allows a commenter to spread the links how they like.
• GoodLinks – This plugin looks extremely useful for many people who have layout problems when people post long URLs – it also removes NoFollow as an option
• Blank Target Comments – Another multi-purpose comment link plugin – it removes nofollow from only the comment author links, and adds target=”_blank” – no link because it doesn’t seem to be available for download any more which is a shame.
• Remove Nofollow – Cristian Mezi from SeoPedia’s plugin – I am not sure of the history or features, but it is probably similar to the original DoFollow plugin.
• NoNofollow – Including this link for historical reasons – Bronski’s plugin doesn’t work with newer versions of WordPress, but credit where credit is due.
• WP-Nofollow – Again included for historical reasons – one of the first plugins for WP 1.2 based on the original MT plugin code

Let us know which one works best for you!

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It seems that we are attracting quite a bit of interest because of the posts on no follow and do follow tags.  I was actually surprised to find out that not many people are yet that aware of the existence of the no follow tag, especially as a default for most blogging platforms.  One of our readers actually tried getting rid of the no follow tag and said that he seems to be getting more visitors because of this.

So do you want to get rid of the no follow tags as well?  There are a lot of resources online which can help you do so.  I think that one of my favorite posts on this topic is by Andy Beard.  He has “the ultimate list” of do follow and no follow plugins.  Here is his take on removing the no follow attribute:

•    Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin – I was going to liken this plugin to a Ferrari, because it is built to be fast, but it is probably more like a Subaru, not just fast but designed for rugged terrain and can handle the twists and turns of comment spammers without slowing down.
•    DoFollow – many look on this as the granddaddy of NoFollow plugins – you just switch it on and it works, all nofollows are removed from comments and trackbacks.
•    Dofollow (WP Plugin) - Sometimes I wish this one has been given a better more descriptive name. It includes the ability (optional) to remove nofollow from comments after a period of time.

These are only the first three on his list.  Let’s take a look at the others in the next post.  In the meantime, why don’t you try looking at these plugins and see how they can work for you?

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