If you sell products on the Internet (e-Commerce) you’ve probably wondered how to get pictures of your products to show up in the Google organic listings, in addition to your text listing.

Well, here’s how it’s done…

STEP 1

List your products in Google Merchant Center.

STEP 2

Be sure your image “alt text” (also known as “alt tag”) is accurate and keyword-specific for the product shown.

GENERAL

When you’re product is listed in Google Merchant Center (black vinyl chair – for example) Google not only searches the entire Internet for text-only organic listings to return to the searcher, Google also searches the products listed in the Google Merchant Center and returns those as thumbnail images with the alt text for that image.

If your black vinyl chair is listed in the Google Merchant Center, Google may choose to display (no guarantees, it is “Google” after all) the thumbnail image of your chair in the organic search results, along with your text-only organic listing.

That’s right…it’s possible for you to show up TWICE on page 1 (image + text-only organic listing)…IF you’ve done a great job with your SEO.

AND if you’ve carefully prepared your Google Places listing, you could also show up on page 1 for someone searching for your product who is also in your local geographic area.

That’s 3 times on page 1…possible.

Certainly worth trying for.

But like baseball, you can’t hit a home run…if you don’t step up to the plate and swing.

About  ”Alt Tags”

1) An alt tag tells a viewer to a webpage that an image is being formatted and what that image will show when it is finally displayed.

2) If a visitor has images turned “off” (as many do), the alt tag will be displayed telling the person what picture would have been displayed.

3) Search engines can only read text, and text within an image is invisible, which is why the alt tag is so important for regular searches as well as “image” searches.

4) If a viewer wants to know more about the image, in Internet Explorer they can just mouse-over the image and the alt tag text will appear.

A well-written alt tag contains an accurate, keyword-specific description of the product in 29 characters (including spaces) or less. Google truncates your alt tag at 29 characters when displaying your product thumbnail image in search results.

Since we’re talking about thumbnails that appear in search results, the best alt tags are written like a Google Adwords PPC ad.

Short.

To the point.

Keyword specific.

Clear “call to action”.

 Stay within the allowed character limits (including spaces) so your description isn’t truncated.

SUMMARY

To give your product images a chance of showing up in Google organic search results…

• Step 1 – List your products at Google Merchant Center
• Step 2 – Carefully write your image alt tags

For help with your product placement in search results, call us at 877.280.242