How to rank #1 on Google image search

Today I came across yet another blog post about optimizing for Google image search. Nothing new about that, and what was outlined in the blog post was the same old that most write. Basically it’s the keywords in the alt-tag.. bla bla.. keywords in surrounding text and in title-tag of the page.. bla bla...

If you want to rank for something worthwhile instead of just getting random drive-by traffic, what should you do? Keyword stuff the shit out of your page and alt-tag? Hmm.. nope, that’s not what you do. So let me break it down in two simple factors:

1. Domain authority / trust
2. Keyword rich inbound links to the image

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows a little about SEO. An image is a web document / URL like anything else, and you know how Google ranks such! Don’t get me wrong all the other factors like alt-tags and on-page optimization also seem to matter, but if you want to rank for something competitive, the above two factors are what it comes down to!

I don’t have any scientific tests to point at, but I can let you know that it worked good enough for me to rank in the top 5 for ’sex’ over a period of about 8 months last year (not ranking anymore due to other external factors).. I’d still focus on exactly those two factors when ranking images today!