Google has changed the way image search results are presented. This is having a major impact on traffic driven to sites from image search results.
With Google trying to keep visitors away from your site, what can be done ?
This post shows one way to make the most of the space Google now gives an image.
The idea is to modify the images on your site so that:
- enlarge the image to include a call to action in the border
- then use CSS to show only part of the image on the site
When Google crawls the image, it will take the entire image including the border and calls to action within.
This will enable both brand impressions and marketing messages to be shown to people using Google image search, so even if you can’t get the visit, you can at least claim some mind share.
[An alternative, is simply to add a ‘watermark’ to all of your images, however that doesn’t look so good on your site.]
The following example using an out of focus bee settling on a lavender plant, shows how to use CSS to control the visible area of the photo.
The CSS used for the following image ensures that only part of the image is visible on page:
img.wp-image-363 {
position:absolute !important;
clip:rect(0px,480px,390px,0px);
}
The html code for the image itself:
<img class="size-full wp-image-363" title="Bees on lavender" src="http://www.seoeditors.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bees-on-lavender-google-image-resize-css.png" alt="" >
The border is transparent to maximize the appearance of the CTA within Google image results.
If you try searching in Google for this image, you should see the image complete with calls to action.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=d&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=bees+on+lavender+css+resize
Give it a go and let me know what you think about this technique.
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Data Highlighter in Google Webmaster Tools
A new tool for helping site owners with structured markup for events has appeared recently in Google Webmaster Tools.
The interface for this new tool called the ‘Data Highlighter’ is shown below:
At the moment the tool is restricted to Events markup, and the video shows you how to set about Highlighting.
On selecting the ‘Start Highlighting’ option, you get the following screen:
All you need to do is enter the URL of the page containing events to start with. This looks to be the start of a move by Google to make decorating html and adding schema somewhat easier than relying on development cycles. As we move into 2013, the data highlighter tool is likely to become much more comprehensive.
Quality Issues and Content Hijacking Messages
SEOs around the world have been following DEJANSEO’s recent hijacking experiments. Some may have been tempted to try the content scraping technique for themselves, perhaps with a meta refresh or javascript location switch, in order to send a visitor to the preferred target. Hijacking has been around for years, however this technique exposed interesting side benefits and insights available through webmaster tools:
However, it seems Google has caught up with the content scraper hijack today (Saturday 17th November 2012):
http://dejanseo.com.au/google-against-content-scrapers/
and issued DejanSEO with a warning message.
The red circle highlights the crux of DejanSEO’s hijacking test. Content from the target was copied verbatim to a new domain, then that new domain was given an authority link (in order to give it higher page rank than the source) and thereby displace the original source in SERPs. The really interesting effect of the hijacking was that it also gave visibility (through Webmaster Tools) of the backlinks to the original source page – very handy as an additional source alongside MajesticSEO, ahrefs, Blekko et al.
Quality Issues Message in Webmaster Tools – Copied Content
On average (according to Matt Cutts), only about 10 sites a day are sent unnatural links warnings (July 27th 2012). So I’d suspect even fewer can expect to receive the low quality issue message specifically mentioning copied content. It may be that DejanSEO raised awareness to the extent that he has received a personal message from Google…
Please comment on this post if you have seen or received a message worded in exactly the same way from the Google Search Quality Team as the one shown above. It’d be interesting to gauge the extent of these messages.
Quality Messages from Google – Hidden Text
The evolution of warning messages is fascinating. When hidden text was the ranking technique of choice up until July 2007, Google’s first messages to be delivered in Wemaster Tools looked like this:
Notice that Google is very open about the impact of using hidden text – stating removal from search results for at least 30 days. Google is less open now about the penalties applied to sites and pages found in violation of the guidelines. So SEOs must use knowledge and experience.
