Optimizing Images


Everybody remembers to link and tag their text, but many people neglect site design. I remember the day I discovered my brother didn't know about the new Google Image Search, and I showed him how it would help us find our goal.


  "Ah!" he said.


  Google Image Search is heavily used and full of potential for webcomics.


  If you use Google Image Search a lot, you might have noticed that some webcomics turn up again and again among the various results. One of the most common is Toothpaste for Dinner, which once turned up among the results of three personal unrelated searches in one day.


  The value of having images appear in search results is probably minor, but the price of admission is low: all you have to do is give your images captions and build up your site's prominence.

1. Images Cannot Be Read

Google reads text, but while it can identify something is an image, it can't tell for sure what it is. A lot of Google image identification is based on guesses: text that appears to be about the image, for example. This is why you get some really fun results when you search images.


  It does not read text images, like a photograph of someone's name. Though these images often start out as text in programs like Photoshop, they are rasterized, which means converted into image data, before use. The text in most webcomics is rasterized, and unreadable to search engines.

2. Captions are an option

Look at how Cyanide and Happiness makes sure their name and URL  accompany their strips:

Cyanide and Happiness Webcomic

 
Note how the name actually overlies the strip. This is so people doing screen grabs can't capture the image without taking the caption with it. It's a little intrusive, but for frequently copied webcomics like C&H, it may be seen as a necessity.


  If the goal is not to attach the strip information to the image, then a simple magazine-style caption, such as Above: A Webcomic, might suffice.


  Be wary of text located near an unlabeled image. A search engine might lift some, thinking it goes with the graphic.

3. Using ALT attributes

ALT attributes are the part of a link that is used to identify images. This is the most professional way to manage. They are called attributes because they are an attribute, or a portion, of a link.


  It's also the way of the future. Automated readers for the blind rely on such tags to explain images.


  Explaining the execution of an ALT attribute is beyond the scope of this article, and it is explained elsewhere with clarity and detail. But for those unfamiliar, and depending on your platform, ALT attributes are simply inserted into code and associated with a particular image.


  You may already be familiar with making an image into a link, so that clicking the image takes you to a new destination. ALT attributes are an optional component of that link: they appear if an image fails to loads, informing what's missing, and they tell search engines what an image is about.


  Inserting tags and attributes goes easily on Synthasite, the system I use. You simply indicate what item you are tagging, and drop the tag or attribute information into a designated box. This makes tag updating extremely easy.

4. Tell the searchers everything

Every image on your site, except for advertisements, should have an ALT description. I don't know, but suspect, that search engines respect you a bit less if such tags are missing.

 
  

 
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