How Brides Search

Do you realize how important the images on your website are to your search traffic?

I was speaking to a regional conference of ABC members recently and was telling them about the way their target market searches when planning their wedding. In the early stages they primarily are searching for images.

One young lady stood up and identified herself as a member of Gen Y. She then went on to say that not only was it true that  they were looking at images but that in truth, they rarely took time to read even the smallest amount of copy. Only if an image really caught them would they bother to find out more. Half of the time they never even bothered to visit the website hosting the image, just surfing though a panel on Cool Iris that matched their search.

How does your website fit into this pattern?

First off, if all of your images are locked into a Flash gallery, they aren’t search-able at all. You may have the most beautiful image of “Winter Candle Centerpiece” but if it in a Flash gallery it won’t show up in a Google (or Bing or Yahoo) image search.

Your images need to be labeled and described using related keywoods; including any long-tail keywords that apply. This is the sum total of what the search engines see; they don’t “see” pictures, only the words attached to them.

I see so many websites that are Flash that have been optimized to get the homepages to show up in search. They are  full of metatags and some even still have hidden text. I have news for you, that is not where most people land from a search, they usually land somewhere in the middle on a specific image, page or post. If we are talking about GenY, it will most likely be an image.

So, knowing all this, how does your web presence stack up?

If it doesn’t, give me a shout.

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