Are Images not Relevant Content?

Lots of SEO tips for handling text...but what about images?

[keyon]

I've been learning plenty over the last few months about SEO and how I can help search engines determine if my website is relevant to a particular search. However, everything I've read so far seems to imply that search engines care about text, not images.

So what if you have a website that primarily consists of photos? Are photos not relevant content? Of course they are. Sure, I can use text captions and alt tags, but this still won't come even close to the suggested text/html ratios I've read about.

Does a photo website even have a chance of getting indexed?

[jonrichd]

While I believe it is harder to rank a website that consists primarily of pictures, you might be able to get some rankings if you have detailed descriptions of the pictures, an accurate title tag, and some effective anchor text in the links to your photo pages.

However, let me point out that the main purpose of 'default' search engines is to index text, and display results that best match the user's query. That's why most of the search engines have come up with an 'image search' option that is designed to display pictures of objects, rather than descriptions of objects. The tactics I mentioned above will presumably help you rise to the top of image search rankings, as well.

[Leosghost]

SE's are all about ( for now ..text ) how ever much we might like to make it otherwise ( been there ..have a rack full of tee-shirts) ..

so rather than push water uphill ..write about your photo's ..imagine you are trying to describe them to a blind user ( good thing in itself) ..include a basic description on your thumbnails pages about the category and a little about each ( original reason for alt text :)..larger description on your individual pages ( about 300 words per pic ) ..above and below the images ..

[keyon]

Thanks for the tips...Nice suggestion, Leosghost, about writing to a blind user.

I was looking at a website the other day that surrounded an image with an H1 tag. That seemed a little strange to me. When I asked the designer why he did that, he said that SEs would regard the image alt tag as H1-level text. Is this even close to the truth?

[Leosghost]

no ..most se's dont even begin to count alt texts unless they really cant find anything else to go on.

powdork mentioned somewhere recently why he does it ..nothing to do with that just he makes his coffee his way