By Daniel D Dwase

It might sound strange but many webmasters are not even aware of the power of visual content on their websites.

With the emergence Web 2.0, images have assumed unprecedented significance in the web designing world.

Needless to say, optimized visual content such as flash and images on websites have enticed more eyeballs than ever before.

Today, on any given webpage, well-optimized visual content plays an equally important role as textual content.

The conventional wisdom "a picture is worth a million words" is suddenly proving more meaningful with images taking the center stage of visitors' attention.

Here's how to use images to influence your visitors:

Naming Your Images Perfectly

Often, while using images on websites, we ignore to name them properly. Most of the times, people name them image1.jpg or something like that.

But, if you can use descriptive names for all your images it can make a large difference to the search engine positioning of your images.

This also helps search engines and your users know what the image is about. You can use the names of the images as your keywords which can be another way of promoting your keywords.

If you are using key phrases to name your images, make sure you use hyphen in between the words.

A useful practice is to use descriptive texts or captions near the images to help the viewer find out what the images are about.

Using 'Alt' Attributes for Your Images

'Alt' attribute helps search engines determine what your image is about. Search engines rely much on this data which can surely help to drive guaranteed web site traffic through your images if you can include your targeted keywords in your 'Alt' data.

Here's an example...

Provide descriptive 'Alt' attribute for each image, but make sure they are not too long.

As the alt data provides you an additional opportunity to promote your keywords, try to key in your important key phrases and make the best use of the 'Alt' tag on your page.

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Your Images

Your targeted visitors that come through image search must be looking for something unique.

So, try to add some unusual but attractive images that can increase the number of clicks on your image at the search engines.

Use your creativity to name your images with keywords. It will increase the searchability of the images helping your visitors find them through search engines.

Another feature that deters visitors from opening an image properly before viewing is the loading time.

Therefore, it is important that you follow techniques of quicker page loading to hold the attention of your visitors.

If you have lots of images on a single page, keep your image sizes small. Use width and height attribute to improve the loading time of your pages.

For example...

Using Google Webmaster Tools

Before you look for techniques to drive guaranteed web site traffic through images, it is important that your image pages get indexed in search engines.

Google can help your pages get listed faster. Google has provided Enhance Image Search option with its Webmasters Tools.

You can click on the option to ensure that the images on your website are indexed better and appear in Google's image search engine.

Driving Traffic Though Photography Sites Using Images

These days, social photography sites like Flickr are coming up with options of sharing images, creating community and attracting interested viewers.

With photography sites becoming more popular among internet users and enhancing global presence of your images, you can make the best use of them to draw traffic to your website.

After the integration of Flickr with Yahoo, pictures from Flickr are being displayed with the image search of Yahoo.

Even, Google and Technorati display images from Flickr. However, you need to optimize the attributes and name your images with proper keywords.

When visitors are your prime consideration, you can't ignore any of the sources to drive traffic to your website.

With the growing inclination of internet users towards images and videos, you need to adopt new sources of traffic to your website.

The above tips of optimizing your images can draw guaranteed web site traffic and help improve your online business.

Return from Guaranteed Web Site Traffic to Viral Video Marketing Home Page

Return from Guaranteed Web Site Traffic to Targeted Traffic Home Page