Get valuable backlinks using your images
Links to your site or backlinks are one of the most important ranking signals in GoogleGoogle. They are also one of the hardest to achieve!. There are many ways to get these links, and here I'll show you how to get them using your images.
How to find who is using your images
Whether you create your own images or buy them, there is a good chance that someone may be using them. That's good, it means more backlinks for you! But the problem is that quite often the source of the picture is not specified.
Luckily, you can find those forgetful people, and ask them nicely to give you a well-deserved backlink for the time or money or perhaps both, that you spent on that image.
Finding out who is using your images is simple, you can achieve it by using a reverse image search.
1 First, you need to go to Google Images and click the little camera.
2 Enter the URL of your image and click on Search by Image (Alternatively you can choose an Image from your computer)
I'm going to use this picture from one of my posts as an example:
3 Now, there are different ways to find similar images the fastest is by clicking on "All sizes."
(the other way is to go through the list below "Pages that include matching images" but it takes more time as it will show you not only matching images but similar images also)
4 Google will now show you all the indexed images. Select one
5 Click "Visit page" and check to see if your image is correctly linked to your site
Now check if your image is properly linked to your site (it must be an actual link, not plain text). Places where it may be.
- Below or Above the image
- The image itself
- At the bottom of the post
You can search by browsing the page but a little trick to make this process faster is to use the source code. Press F12 to open the source code, then press Shift+f to open the search box and look for your URL. It will automatically find your site if it is present.
If you don't find any backlink, look for the contact form and ask them nicely to give you credit.
In this example, from the 3 matches, 2 were websites and 1 Google Plus. I went to both sites, and none of them had a backlink to ohow.co (I won't ask for a backlink for these 2 since I want to leave it as an example)
Other uses for Google Images
On top of finding who is using your images you can also get more useful information including:
- More resolutions of the image (if any)
- Suggestions for the name of the place/thing in the picture - if its a known place/thing
- Information about the image
- Similar Images - If you want to get inspiration!!
On the result page, you will see if your image is used somewhere else. If someone is using it, you can visit the site, and if they are not giving you credit, you can ask them nicely, to give you a valid backlink to your precious Image.
