How to Optimize Your Photos for Google Places

It’s no secret that adding photos to your Google Place page can help with your ranking; however, there are techniques for optimizing photos that will help make your Google Places page rank even higher.
Local Splash has found that by adding the business name, phone number, city, state and a few keywords to the photos, our clients rank much higher than those with normal photos that haven’t been altered. Our company has performed numerous tests with coding the photos before we upload to our clients Google Places pages and the results have been astoundingly positive. So how do you optimize your photos for Google Places? Follow these steps and watch your ranking climb.

1. Save the photo to your desktop under your business name and a keyword (example: John Doe’s Auto Insurance Agency Newport Beach CA).

2. Open the properties of the image. To do this, right click on the image, then choose “Properties.” See screenshot below.

3. Select the “Summary” tab at the top of the “Properties” box. Here you will be able to add keywords to the image that will be picked up by search engines. See screenshot for an example.

4. After you enter the data, press “OK” to apply and save the content.

5. Add the photos to your Google Places page by signing into your Google Business account, editing your businesses and adding photos (see photo for example). After adding the photos to your Google Places page, it will take some time to see your ranking increase. Remember, increasing your page rank is no overnight process; it takes time and requires patience.

How will this help your search engine ranking?

The more information you provide to the search engines, the more opportunities you’re giving the search engine to learn about your business. Providing more information makes it easier for the search engines to understand your business and what you do. It is by understanding your business that search engines gain confidence in your company, and confidence equates to higher rankings.

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  • Gabe

    This is pretty neat. Going to try it and see what happens.

  • http://www.K9-Toronto.com/ K9-Toronto

    Great. I will try it

  • http://www.crunchwebdesign.co.uk Web Design Wakefield

    Uplo\ading the pics to a photo sharing site & adding keywords & geotags will also help with optimising your photos.

  • http://jeromemayne.com Jerome Mayne – Public Speaker

    Does anyone know if it is better, after optimizing your photo, to upload it directly to the Google Places page or if it is better link to the optimized photo from Google Places; like on Google’s Picassa? Regardless, thanks for the advice above.

    • scarter

      Jerome,

      Thanks for the comment! Although we’ve never tried to do it the way you’re suggesting, (uploading to Picassa then linking to Google Places), we think it would be just as effective as the way we describe in this blog as long as the coding is behind each photo. The coding is what is really needed; how it gets fed to Google doesn’t really matter. However since we’ve never tried uploading to Picassa then linking to Google Places I can’t tell for sure that it’s better or the same as just uploading directly to Google Places. We only know what we’ve done, which is described in this blog post. Let me know if you have any other questions and thanks for reading!

      - Sarah

  • http://LocalOnlineMarketingBC.ca Don Tietz

    Thanks for such excellent information.

  • http://LocalOnlineMarketingBC.ca Don Tietz

    I do not have a tab labeled Summary, any suggestions.

    • scarter

      Hi Don, different browsers may label the tabs different things. If you do not have a “Summary” tab, click through all of the tabs and see if there is one that allows you to fill in the information pictured (Title, Author, Keywords, Comments). It should be there, it might just be labeled something other than “Summary.” Thanks for reading and feel free to leave more comments if you have any more questions.

      Sarah Carter
      Marketing Communications Specialist
      Local Splash

      • http://LocalOnlineMarketingBC.ca Don Tietz

        Thanks Sarah, I found in window7, I can optomize the photo in Pictures by going file,property,details. great information thanks,Don

  • http://www.wordpresswebsiteforbusiness.com Brian Mayer

    I have been looking for this info for a long time. I knew it was necessary but did not know which columns they went in. Do you have any thoughts on image type or image size?

    • scarter

      Brian, image size and type does not matter as long as you optimize it using the steps in this blog. Google doesn’t actually see the picture, it only sees the coding so as long as that is all done correctly your picture will be search-friendly. Thanks for reading! Let us know if you have any other questions.

      Sarah Carter
      Marketing Communications Specialist
      Local Splash

  • http://dagmarmarketing.com Chris Gregory

    Thank you for posting this. I thought I would add for mac users since we don’t have the summary option that there is a freeware program called PhotoInfoEditor that allows you to edit lat/long, city, country, description, and comments of your photos. Very nice tool for editing your Pics for Places all at once. Keep in mind it’s freeware so use at your own risk.

    • scarter

      Chris,
      Thanks so much for reading and sharing some knowledge, I’m sure our Mac users will appreciate that!

      Sarah Carter
      Marketing Communications Specialist
      Local Splash

  • http://dagmarmarketing.com Chris Gregory

    Might have spoke too soon. 3 out of the 5 pics I uploaded were not recognized by google. I’m not sure it was PhotoInfoEditor but not going to test again to be sure. I got what I paid for I guess =). Ended up running Windows in VMware and editing like the instructions above.

  • http://www.seobychristopherwest.com/ Christopher West

    Very Cool Sarah – One of our team brought this to the table today and it does look like a neat way to add info to Images.

    I would imagine that you could do a similar thing with videos too…

  • disqus_DQsclY0IC3

    Would it be better for SEO to upload it from Picasa’s online album, your own website, or it doesn’t matter

  • Dave Rodecker

    The photo should be in optimal anywhere it is published. Unfortunately some destinations will modify your image and remove the XIF attributes; so for those it won’t matter. Other destinations, such as Panoramio will read and preserve the attributes. You also want webcrawlers to see the attributes from the original optimized image on your website.