A week ago Google rolled out its fresh search algo update codenamed Penguin. Nobody knows exactly the reason for naming the update like that - some users talk about the black-and-white animals theory :) - however, everybody knows what Googlers are up to - make search results clearer and more relevant (though they fail pretty often :p).

As usual, it’s not only some black-hat SEOs who have been victims to the update, but some decent websites lost part of their rankings as well due to the changes. Luckily, there’s a workaround for webmaster described below.

First, what has changed in the SEO world?

In the Webmaster Central blog post, we learn that sites practicing web spam tactics, such as keyword stuffing and link schemes, are likely to get hit by the update. Sounds fair enough, right? Well, almost.

Why do we use graphics on our webpages? Right, to better illustrate our ideas, enhance website appearance, and make website browsing more pleasing to the users. However, there are some even more important reasons for using images and photos:

1.    Using unique images provides an opportunity to get found in Google Image Search
2.    Photo galleries can significantly increase the average time spent on site
3.    Graphical content gets natural backlinks more quickly (because users prefer sharing pictures rather than plain text)

Today, let’s talk about how to make your images get found in Google Image Search.

First of all, you should understand that stuffing pages with images for the sake of being found is useless – every time you sacrifice usability (and lots of images will definitely impact your website performance), you risk losing traffic. That is why, use images appropriately and consider the following recommendations:

Add an image sitemap for your website

Submitting your website sitemap helps search bots find more pages in shorter time. The same is true about image sitemaps. In a couple of minutes, search engines will discover all of the images you want to have indexed.