[Brent Palen]

I just spent about thirty minutes posting some random inventory pics to Photobucket and added titles and tags I thought would be effective for SEO. After doing that I am now questioning how beneficial that all was. I created the album with my dealerships name and then titled and tagged the pics with the appropriate make and model as well as tags like Kansas Used Chevy. Will the Spiders associate those tags with the album name which is "Holm Automotive Abilene KS" or was that a complete waste of time?

Heres the link:

Photobucket Album (Click Here)

[CAORYAN]

Brent,

You would be better off offering keywords on your alt tags for the images on your own site. I have found that a lot of dealership websites don't have the proper alt tags and I my research shows that without alt tags your site can drop with images. I built a site and tested both and it dropped a lot without alt tags.

For instance your quick quote image reads "quickquote.jpg". That is not helping you an any way to improve your search ranking. Unless you want to go for the keyword "quick quote". However the giveaway is the .jpg on the alt tag. Keep your alt tags up with keywords and you will spend less time on 3rd party sites trying to optimize images.

Good idea but take care of home first.

[NickCybela]

Brent,

Good for you for doing some new things to keep expanding. Ryan's got a great point here. Focus on what's "at home" (on your website) before you branch out and post images. Also consider being active in forums or popular sites and create strategic links back where allowed. Those will count for more than the images themselves.

Also, take a look at the URL (ex: Holm Automotive Abilene KS :: 2009 Buick Lucerne picture by brentpalen_holmautomotive - Photobucket). It would be better to create something off your site like http://www.holmauto.com/images/2009-buick-lucerne.jpg. Search engines like those "nice" names instead of the strings of code that aren't intuitive

Finally, the #1 thing Google is looking for right now is blogs. By doing them in that format you'll have a better chance of showing up, in my opinion.

[CAORYAN]

I agree with my man Nick....all good stuff.

[Brent Palen]

Thanks guys. Some very good advice. I am currently trying to figure out how to make all of this happen. I do wish our provider allowed us more room to work my own stuff up. Kind of frustrating. Thanks again.

[Alex Snyder]

Brent - I have not done anything with Photobucket, but I do use SmugMug (Axspot Photography - Images of Alex Snyder) and I can say that the best image SEO comes from images inside your own site. It works the same way with video. I think I will turn this into a blog article in the near future: Image and Video SEO best practices.

To get back on the subject, like Ryan said, your images on photobucket will help your photobucket account before they help your own website. That's because they're hosted there. You should work on putting them on your own site, and making sure your site provider allows you to tag them or to not rename them (put your tags in the file name).

[umer.autojini]

Photobucket will not help boost your site in SERP's. Since it does not allow direct links... but you can use that profile to control the first page of SERP's. i.e if you have some negative reviews... boost the rank on your photobucket profile so it shows up on first page... do same for Twitter, MySpace, Facebook etc.

To boost your domain in SERP's you would want to target SMSs that allow direct links... here is a quick list... also don't forget about dealer directories... Auto Dealer Link Directories - Add your dealership to these web directories

SMSite Cateogry PR

Care2 Philanthropy 6
Dfinitive Directory / Bookmarking 4
Adultswim Fan Site / Community 6
Fanpop Fan Site 5
Sphinn Social News 6
Tweako Social News / Social Networking / Social Bookmarking 4
Mixx Social News 3
BlogGoggle Directory 4
CouchSurfing Social Networking 6
CoMagz Social News 4
Ballhype Social News 6
QoolSqool Social News 4
Buzzflash Social News 5
ChipIn Philanthropy 6
ScoreGuru Social News 3
Blogs4god Social News 5
Dnhour Social News 4
Hugg.com Social News 6
Sk-rt Social News / Social Tagging 5
Memeorlame Social News 5
ShowHype Social News 6
PhotographyVoter Social News 4
PixelGroovy Social Directory 4
PlugIM News 4
smallbusinessbrief News 4
23hq Photo sharing 6
DeviantArt Self-publishing, Social Networking 7
GetSatisfaction Community 6
Wis.dm Community 6
Social Media Club Community 6
Magnify Video 6
MyStrands Music 6
SocialPicks Community 5
Simpy Social News 6
Faves Social News / Bookmarking 6
MemFrag Bookmarking 3
NewsWeight Bookmarking 1
WireFan Bookmarking 3
Reddit Social News 8
Spotback Bookmarking 5
Listible Bookmarking 6
Searchles Social Bookmarking 7
A1 Webmarks Social Bookmarking 3
BibSonomy Social Bookmarking 7
My Link Vault Link Directory 5
myVmarks Social Bookmarking 4
Kinja Social Bookmarking 7
Zlitt Social Bookmarking 3
MyPickList Community 4
Squidoo Content Creation 7
Socialogs Social News 4
Grupl Social Bookmarking 5
DotNetKicks Social News 6
Mister Wong Social Bookmarking 7
Connectedy Social Bookmarking 5
Syncone Social Bookmarking 3
DriverSide Social Networking 2
TripIt Community 6
MotoSport Community 4
Yahoo! 360 Social Networking 7
Google Pages Google Pages 8
Blogger Blogging software / host 4
Livejournal Blogging software / host 8
Wordpress Blogging software / host 9
Xanga Social Networking and Blogging 7
EzineArticles News Aggregator 6
Blogsome Blogging software / host 6
Tumblr Content Sharing 7
IndianPad Social News 6
Furl Social News / Bookmarking 8

You can also setup a service like AddThis.com or ShareThis on your site... so visitors to your site help you in getting links.

BTW... your photobucket account contains personal photos... IMO dealership albums should be separated.

[Brent Palen]

Oops...forgot I stuck those up there. Thanks for the heads up.