Google, Bing, Pin­ter­est and eBay have all announced func­tion­al­i­ty or updates for visu­al search recent­ly – sure signs the space is heat­ing up and con­sumers will soon be able to search with images as well as with words and voice.

Even though com­put­er vision tech­nol­o­gy is improv­ing, David Erick­son, vice pres­i­dent of online mar­ket­ing at Kar­wos­ki & Courage Pub­lic Rela­tions, said it’s still impor­tant to prac­tice tra­di­tion­al image search opti­miza­tion tech­niques.

That’s in large part because it is an effec­tive way to gen­er­ate more expo­sure for your images and, by asso­ci­a­tion, your brand.

Mar­cus Mil­er, SEO and PPC strate­gist at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm Bowler Hat, said the process is fair­ly straight­for­ward even though there are a lot of steps. What’s more, most of these steps are easy – and can even be auto­mat­ed on plat­forms like Word­Press or done via plu­g­ins.

First, Miller said to give your image a descrip­tive name, like funnycat.jpg.

You’ll also want to store your images in a rel­e­vant loca­tion, like: images/funnycats/smilingcat.jpg.

“We want to think about what we can do to clear­ly illus­trate the con­tent of the image along with ensur­ing the image is opti­mized for speedy deliv­ery and ide­al­ly the cor­rect pix­el size for the tar­get device,” Miller added.

Here are 15 oth­er tips to ensure max­i­mum expo­sure for your brand’s images:

1. Names

Not only do you want a descrip­tive image name, you should also try to include rel­e­vant key­words, Erick­son said.

That’s because the file name adds addi­tion­al con­text for search engines and helps sig­nal what the images include, added Peter Oles­son, founder of SEO con­sult­ing firm SEO Vena­tor.

And, said Stephen Seifert, SEO and mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at trans­la­tion ser­vices firm Day Trans­la­tions, this is eas­i­er to under­stand when you con­sid­er a file name like image12.png, which does not help a search engine under­stand any­thing about what the image con­tains.

In oth­er words, you want to be as descrip­tive as pos­si­ble.

“If your e‑commerce image is of an iPhone case, tell search engines more about it. Your image file name and alt text should be some­thing like apple-iphone-water­proof-shock­proof-case,” Seifert said. “When it comes to online mar­ket­ing and image opti­miza­tion, you are not sole­ly sell­ing to your tar­get audi­ence, you are sell­ing your prod­ucts to search engines as well. You want them to choose your images for rel­e­vant search queries.”

2. Alt Text

Speak­ing of alt text, you also want to make sure every image has an alt tag – and great alt text that accu­rate­ly describes the image, aligns with the file name and includes key­words where appro­pri­ate.

Per Oles­son, alt text tags are HTML codes added to images that pro­vide descrip­tions of the images.

“This text pro­vides addi­tion­al con­text for search engines and helps users with screen read­ers who have visu­al impair­ments to under­stand the image,” he added.

This addi­tion­al text also helps brands cap­i­tal­ize on word-based search­es, which still dom­i­nate as visu­al search evolves, not­ed Scott Lit­vack, direc­tor of organ­ic search at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Wpro­mote.

3. Captions

Miller said you should con­sid­er using cap­tions for images to add even more con­text for search engines. Cap­tions should describe the pho­to or the action with­in.

Bradley Shaw of con­sult­ing and online mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm SEO Expert Brad, agreed, say­ing many brands don’t do this – like­ly because an image seems self-explana­to­ry – but cap­tions can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on rank­ings, so it should be a part of a site’s style guide­lines to always include cap­tions.

“The idea is to pro­vide as much on-page con­text with the pho­to for search engines to fig­ure out the con­tents of the pho­to,” Erick­son said. “Be sure to men­tion place names and the names of peo­ple with­in a pho­to­graph, where appro­pri­ate.”

4. Tags

Tags also help images be found and, said Bill Winn, dig­i­tal PR and dis­play media man­ag­er of SEO com­pa­ny Inseev Inter­ac­tive, you should use relat­ed tags to help broad­en the num­ber of search­es for which your images will be found by, say, pub­lish­ers.

“For exam­ple, a pho­to of a cou­ple pic­nick­ing at sun­down isn’t just that, it’s also a roman­tic date night idea,” Winn said. “Tag it with that and oth­er descrip­tions so that it pops up when pub­lish­ers search around top­ics that align with their arti­cles. These tips will help your images achieve greater cir­cu­la­tion and present more oppor­tu­ni­ties to request attri­bu­tion and back­links to your web­site.”

5. Keywords

Christo­pher Groz­don, CMO of SEO and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Dash-SEO, also sug­gest­ed tak­ing time to do prop­er key­word research for image titles and alt text. That includes tools like Ahrefs.

“Once we’ve found an excel­lent key­word with high user intent, we’ll then incor­po­rate it into the image’s title and alt text,” he said. “This addi­tion­al­ly assists visu­al­ly impaired users by pro­vid­ing an audio descrip­tion of what the image is about.”

6. Size

Oles­son said to con­sid­er in advance where you will fea­ture the image and to size it accord­ing­ly for opti­mal dis­play.

Miller also sug­gest­ed con­sid­er­ing what device will be used to access said image to ensure the speed­i­est pos­si­ble deliv­ery. In addi­tion, use respon­sive images where pos­si­ble, he added.

You can also help speed load­ing time by incor­po­rat­ing brows­er caching so images can be loaded local­ly on sub­se­quent vis­its, Miller said.

7. Placement

You should also place the image close to relat­ed con­tent on the page, Miller said. This pro­vides even more con­text for search engines.

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant Collin Davis agreed brands should use con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant con­tent around images.

“For exam­ple, a search for ‘iPhone 7’ on Google Images shows oth­er searched queries such as, ‘Rose Gold,’ ‘Mat­te Black,’ etc.,” he said. “So if you have a Rose Gold image and if you have used [it] on a prod­uct page, make sure that the prod­uct page…references…the col­or of the prod­uct [and the image is placed near­by].”

8. Structured Data Markup

Erick­son said to always include struc­tured data markup for pho­tos that accom­pa­ny con­tent that calls for struc­tured data, such as recipes or the thumb­nail images for videos.

Indeed, Davis said schema tags for images are used by Google, Bing and Pin­ter­est to pro­vide rich infor­ma­tion in SERPs. And that means they can help your images be found in search.

9. Geotags

Davis rec­om­mend­ed geo-tag­ging images relat­ed to a loca­tion in order to sur­face them in relat­ed queries.

“For exam­ple, Pin­ter­est has a loca­tion-based fea­ture where­in you can search images from a spe­cif­ic loca­tion,” Davis said. “If you geo­t­ag your images cor­rect­ly with the loca­tion, this can sur­face up for such queries.”

10. Clutter

Erick­son said Google Pho­tos is get­ting increas­ing­ly bet­ter at cat­e­go­riz­ing images, which is a good exam­ple of com­put­er vision at work.

“Com­put­er vision algo­rithms work by first rec­og­niz­ing the edges of things with­in a pho­to,” Erick­son said. “Once the edges of objects have been estab­lished, the algo­rithm can then rec­og­nize shapes. Once it can rec­og­nize shapes, then the algo­rithm can begin to make asso­ci­a­tions between dif­fer­ent shapes in a scene and under­stand and cat­e­go­rize objects.”

And that is why sim­ple, unclut­tered images are eas­i­er for algo­rithms to under­stand.

Laris­sa Muril­lo, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at search opti­miza­tion and web­site mar­ket­ing tool Mar­ket­Goo, agreed visu­als should have either no back­ground or a “non-noisy back­ground.”

“You need qual­i­ty visu­als,” Muril­lo said. “I agree with the advice that you should pick visu­als not based on your per­son­al pref­er­ences but on your goals and their fit with your larg­er strategy…and if includ­ing peo­ple makes sense in your prod­uct pho­tos, do it! This increas­es con­ver­sion rates.”

In fact, Neer­aj Vaish­nav, gen­er­al man­ag­er at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency RankUno Inter­ac­tive Tech­nolo­gies, said brands should ask ques­tions like:

• How many prod­ucts are shown in a pic­ture?
• Is the mer­chan­dise shown clear­ly?
• Are peo­ple allowed to enlarge the image or rotate the prod­uct 360 degrees?

11. Image Open Graph Tags

Oles­son said an image open graph tag is a piece of HTML code that opti­mizes social media shar­ing.

“The code works by hav­ing a ded­i­cat­ed image select­ed with­in that code,” Oles­son said. “When a page is shared with an image open graph tag, the ded­i­cat­ed image is fea­tured when the page is shared on var­i­ous social plat­forms.”

12. Image Sitemaps

Lit­vack said image sitemaps allow for eas­i­er index­a­tion of images – and par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are being loaded by JavaScript code. This, in turn, helps sur­face images in search results.

13. Pinterest

Michael Heili­gen­stein, direc­tor of SEO at small busi­ness advo­ca­cy firm Fit Small Busi­ness, sug­gest­ed also post­ing images on Pin­ter­est as it is a wide­ly used visu­al search engine.

Muril­lo not­ed Pin­ter­est allows users to cap­ture an image and find sim­i­lar prod­ucts and relat­ed con­tent.

“What this means is that you need to make sure your prod­uct inven­to­ry is on Pin­ter­est, not only opti­mized for key­words and with detail-rich cap­tions, but also using high qual­i­ty images,” she added. “Take advan­tage of the image match­ing func­tion­al­i­ty of Pin­ter­est Lens as well as its Instant Ideas fea­ture.”

Heili­gen­stein warned brands should also have a strat­e­gy to get Pin­ter­est users to their web­sites so their jour­ney does not end on the social plat­form.

Winn also sug­gest­ed post­ing on pho­to-shar­ing sites like Flickr to make sure images are wide­ly seen.

14. Maps

In addi­tion, Tere­sa Walsh, mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive at online vehi­cle check site Cazana.com, sug­gest­ed maps as image-based brand assets.

“Maps with cool sto­ries and unique data are the way for­ward,” she said. “They stand out and are incred­i­bly share­able. This is not only a cool way to get a visu­al rank­ing but it is a bril­liant white hat link build­ing strat­e­gy.”

15. Infographics

In order to con­vince con­sumers who find your images in search results to not just save said image with­out click­ing through to your web­site, Heili­gen­stein said to con­sid­er what you real­ly want from your Google Image search results and “put togeth­er images peo­ple will want to know more about, ones that are com­pelling but don’t tell the full sto­ry.”

And, he said, info­graph­ics or images includ­ing text are two great ways of doing this.