Don’t forget to optimize for colors…an SEO post.

One thing that many people forget when using modifiers (words at the beginning and end of your keyword phrases) is that colors are modifiers too.  You have blue, red, black, gold, silver, and other colors that are very relevant to searches and sales, and they can have search volumes that not only drive traffic, but they can also drive sales.  We’ll use clothing as an example.

Suppose you have a site for dresses.  You have numerous sizes and also probably some niche brands.  If your best seller is a black dress, you may end up wanting to use modifiers to help optimize your images and pages for those particular types of black dresses.

You have plus sized black dresses as well as size 2 black dresses.  Unfortunately many people forget to update their image optimization (read through other posts on SEO on this blog for optimizing images) and to use color modifiers in their tagging, naming, etc…  Ignoring your color optimization is especially bad because Google even tells people to select a color when they do an image search.  The image to the left is an image search for plus sized dresses telling me to select a color.

Now when I click the color black, all of the sudden all of the images show up as plus sized black dresses.  What’s even more important to remember though is that when you do a normal search for plus sized black dresses, image results show up in the organic results, sometimes above the regular results, and are a huge opportunity for newer sites without a ton of SEO traffic to get to compete for these targeted search phrases.  If you can get your most popular plus sized black dress to show up, you can probably get some people to click through and possibly shop on your site.  The next thing you should be thinking about with color modifiers are your datafeeds for Google Base.

It is important to optimize your feed for colors with modifiers, and one of the best ways to get to show in the long tail search results and even some very targeted vanity terms is by being descriptive with the right modifiers and optimization techniques within your feed.  When you type plus sized black dress into Google, the first result is normally Google shopping and they are all plus sized black dresses.  Because the feeds and stores that are showing up first are fairly well optimized and they are also using the right modifiers, they are showing up and getting to display their products in front of targeted shoppers before the sites which are working at SEO for those same terms.  These same sites also have the better shot at getting a sale since they can show an image of their best selling product in front of the shopper instead of just getting to show some words and a text link.

If you’re looking for another way to optimize your site and sales from SEO, try using color modifiers on things that are relevant and have a search volume.  Flowers, Clothing and furniture are all great niches that are not utilizing color modifiers for image optimization and driving sales.  Feel free to share your own ideas for optimizing for colors and image searches by leaving a comment below.