It’s been called ‘the last SEO frontier’ for SEO because it’s frequently ignored, but for those in the know and who take the time to optimize their images for search engines, it can be a rich source of traffic.
And for those who want a high position for their own names (like me), it’s important to get an image or 2 into the top 5 so that you’re more likely to appear on the front page of the Google SERPs. It will take a while before I rank for Tim for a first-name only search, but it’s not impossible to get onto the first page for that either.

So here is a photo of Tim Gregory that has never been placed online before to see if I can get it to rise up through the SERPs for image search.

Let’s see how that ranks for an image search for Tim Gregory. From what I’ve read, the crawlers take a long time to crawl images, so I may have to wait a while for results.

There is a fair amount of advice out there on SEO blogs on optimizing for placement in Google image searches, but much of it is contradictory and almost every list of tips has it’s own unique take on the subject.

I’ve tried to assemble some of the pointers that made the most sense to me, and where there was some agreement between the SEO commentators.

Use a suitable page title and headline
The title and main headline on the page should line up with the image name.
In the case of this blog post, I’ve used Tim Gregory in the title, headline, and image name.

Use Alt and Title tags
Make use of alt and title tags within your img tags. Don’t stuff them with keywords, but use a few relevant words or a short key phrase that describes the image

Post relevant caption text
Place some text describing the image close to the image with the keyword/words you are trying to associate with the image.
Some commentators say that putting the image and caption inside the same div, span or table cell will help the Google bot connect the image and the caption.

Name your image correctly, and choose a suitable file type
Use your keywords delimited by hyphens inside the image name. Keep the total number of words used below 5. Create the filename in the format “word1-word2-word3.png”
Use .png if possible, followed by .jpg and .gif

Link to your images
Link to images with keywords in the anchor text and a suitable title

Anyone else tried ranking for images and have some advice on the subject?

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1. Top 3 positions in Google SERPS for my name “Tim Gregory”
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3. The Google Sandbox AKA ‘Ageing Filter’

It’s day 4, and I’m in position 6 on a Google search for “Tim Gregory”…. not a bad start (altho I sometimes seem to drop to the second page.

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1. SEO Update #2
2. More SEO for ‘Tim Gregory’ – SEO for Google image search
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I am currently studying for my MBA through Henley Business School, attached to the University of Reading in the UK.
Right now I’m working through the ‘Strategic Marketing’ module. During the course of our module workshop, Professor David James spoke a bit about ‘Personal Branding’, the process of marketing people and careers as brands.
He got a mixed response from the group… some thought it was a practice bordering on deception. His pitch was that it’s important to present the elements of your professional and personal life that were most important in a consistent, understandable and marketable way.

It struck a chord for me, and I started to look more critically at my own personal brand online.

To date, I’ve done a terrible job… I’ve been online for 14 years, a professional in the Internet and Web Publishing industry for 12 years, and yet a Google search on Tim Gregory turns up:

• Tim Gregory the actor on IMDB
• Tim J Gregory on Facebook
• Tim Gregory, the New Spaces host from Ohio
• Tim Gregory ,the Associate Director at the Catholic University of America
• Tim Gregory, the amateur photographer from the UK

And so on….
You get the picture – despite the opportunity I’ve had, I’ve not tried to ensure that I own my name online and shape the content associated with it.
An even more alarming case than my own of an individual who failed to actively manage his personal brand comes from RJ van Spaandonk, of the Core Group.

Now the Core Group has recently been under fire for their high prices and their public attacks on parallel imports of Apple products through their ‘stopgrey.co.za’ website. Instead of engaging meaningfully with his customers, RJ van Spaandonk launched a bizarre campaign of Twitter posts that made him look like a raving lunatic.

This campaign backfired horribly – his posts were picked up and reposted throughout Twitter and blogs, and further entrenched his reputation as an arrogant monopolist out of touch with his customers. It seems he thought social media was somehow still a one-to-many medium, and he could actively manage his convoluted campaign without anyone responding to the conversation he had started online before he was finished speaking. You can see his actual Twitter posts preserved at The Mac Blog
The result was predictable… the prolific bloggers and SEO experts that he “sought to engage with on their own territory” simply had to repeat his misguided utterances, and now a Google search for “RJ van Spaandonk” returns his regrettable statements in all their glory.

Google search for RJ van Spaandonk on 5 July 2009

Perhaps his first mistake was assuming that “journalists” were somehow different from “bloggers and twitterers”? RJ, a tip – as I’m sure you’re learning, it’s all the same thing on the internet.

In case I have to spell it out for you, Mr van Spaandonk has lost control of his personal brand online, and he’s going to have a tough time reclaiming it. And instead of showing some humility and seeking to open the conversation with his critics on more positive terms, he chooses to alienate them further, claiming that he “overestimated the wit and sense of humour” of his audience. Poor RJ.
For examples of people doing an excellent job of creating and maintaining their personal brands take a look at Google searches for my colleagues Brendan McNulty and Matthew Buckland. Most of the first page of results for these guys is all about them. Brendan goes as far as buying Google Adwords for his own name, which I imagine costs him very little as I suspect the bidding activity around the search term ‘Brendan McNulty’ is pretty low.

Moving on… So what am I doing about my own poor showing online?

• Registered a vanity domain (tim-gregory.com)
• Started blogging again. It’s about time I stood by my own thoughts and utterances
• Applied some basic SEO techniques, like using dashes in my domain name to show the search engines that those are separate words
• Leverage online profiles and social tools – follow Tim Gregory on Twitter, view the Tim Gregory professional profile on LinkedIn and the Facebook profile for Tim Gregory.
• Continue to build a strong network of relevant industry professionals through LinkedIn
• Start contributing across the ‘blogosphere’, leaving relevant comments against articles for blog posts where I have some industry expertise – most of them allow you to link your own site when you enter your name and email address against a comment. (Can get you some traffic, but not great for SEO because of the ‘nofollow’ command usually given to the search engines in comments)
• Set SEO targets – it’s my ambition to knock the actor, host, and amateur photography off the top positions for MY name online
• Look for media mentions where possible

If you have any interest in this SEO and personal branding experience, and would like to see whether an outsider can overtake established personal brands in search engine results, please link to my blog using my name, or simple post a link to this article. Feel free to drop comments about your experience maintaining your personal brand online.

If you have a website and would like to help me claim my name, please insert this into your site somewhere:

<a href="http://tim-gregory.com" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Tim Gregory">Tim Gregory Blog</a>

Thanks!

Updated: Marcia Netto sent me a good link – Searcher Behaviour Research Update – “What about the branding aspect? The study found that 36% believe that companies whose websites are returned at the top of the search results are the top companies in their field.” Can we can infer from this behaviour that the top-ranked individual for a given name/term is regarded as a leader?

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