Are pictures good content and will I rank well if I have a lot of them and not much editorial content?

Question - My art and drawing site concept consists mainly of pictures and not a lot of words for content. Is this going to be a problem?

Answer - Not having a lot of words on your site and having only pictures is going to be a problem as search engines rank pages on their editorial content and then graphics to a lesser degree.

Try to put as many words and descriptions into your pages for each picture as you possibly can.

If you don't you'll have a very difficult time attracting visitors until you start to get a lot of incoming links (which is another important criteria) and even then it will be a battle.

Having content shouldn't be a problem for your visitors because if they just want your pictures they will skip over the words but if you don't have words there you're pages will never be found, so you really need to have plenty of content if you want to rank well and attract lots of visitors.

See how I've used lots of content as well as pictures on these pages -

www.hobbyandlifestyle.com/bull-terrier.html

www.hobbyandlifestyle.com/saint-bernard.html

www.hobbyandlifestyle.com/cocker-spaniel.html and

www.hobbyandlifestyle.com/german-shepherd.html

These pages are very popular with both search engines and readers because they tell the full story and people arriving at them can read content exactly related to their Google or Yahoo search query.

If you are having trouble filling up your picture filled pages with content, go the other way and include lots of articles about different drawings and art which will rank highly and then you can direct people who arrive at your site on these pages to your actual picture pages that won't be able to rank well due to the lack of content.

That's one of the secrets of building a site that works really well.

Attract visitors to pages containing content and keywords you can get high rankings for (because you will only be able to rank very well for a few keywords until you have time to build lots of pages) and then direct those visitors to your high profit or sales pages once they arrive (preferably after you've captured their name and email address ;-).

In addition to having lots of editorial content, to get the most mileage out of each picture you use for search engine positioning, be very specific in naming them before you upload them into Solo Build It.

Then as you include each one on a page, use the Alt field and the Mouseover Text field in the Graphic box in Solo Build It as well and name the picture the same keyword as the .jpg is called.

For example, a picture of a Galah would be called -

galahpicture.jpg

...and in the Alt tag in the graphic box in as you build the page Solo Build It you would write Galah Picture (note the capital letters at the start of each word and the space between them in the Alt tag box but not in the picture file name).

This will help your graphics rank well in the Yahoo and Google image directories and people will find your site through these as well.

Make sure watch this video on how to optimize your pictures so that they bring you an ongoing stream of traffic from Google and Yahoo images.