If you are an online business owner then you must read this article. You could be losing hundreds or thousands of visitors each and every day. Did you know that millions of people are using the web to find pictures of Old Faithful, a ’69 Mustang or a cartoon drawing of Bill Clinton? There are potential customers searching for graphics of your products and services right now. Are you capturing their business?

The major search engines have been collecting images from websites and sorting them by topics, keywords and alt tags. Are you optimizing your images properly to take advantage of this free advertising?

Google's Image Search forms about 12% of its regular search queries. That's a lot of searching for graphics. To give you an example, Google’s Image Search accounts for more queries than Ask.com’s regular queries. If your online business lends itself to photos, that percentage could mean a jump to 25-40% of your traffic.

There are a few basic rules to optimizing your images. While optimization is optional, I highly recommend taking the additional 30 seconds to add alt and title tags and proper graphic names. The difference in traffic and income could be drastic.

Some folks shy away from alt tags these days. I still like them and use them to my advantage. The trick is to code the tag so that it provides a line of information to your website visitor.

For example, I have a fitness website that displays photographs of different exercises. The alt tag for a particular exercise would read: Crunch- Keep Belly Button Pulled Into Spine.

In other words, use the alt tag to sum up your main point of having the graphic in the first place. Be sure to include words in your alt tag that help define the picture as well. The alt tag will only display if the graphic does not load, or if your visitor is using a text based browser.

Use the title tag in your images as well. The title tag will display when you move your cursor over an image. The title tag is built into the coding of the image just as the alt tag is. You should also use words that describe the graphic and provide additional information.

Another way to optimize images is in their file names. All graphics have a file name when you save them. This is a simple way to earn points with the search engine! Instead of naming your ab crunch picture 1yhjdk65789.jpg, why not name it ab-crunch.jpg? It’s all about using words to describe the image.

This may be reminding you of keywords. Images should be treated just as your online business content. I’ll even go a step further and say that images should be an integral part of your website content. Use every advantage you have to rank well at the engines!

One caveat: do not spam your alt or title tags. Search engines are growing smarter every day. Build your web business with dignity and honesty. The throwback will be tenfold.

Your hosting company should provide image search traffic analysis of your website. If your hosting company does not provide this, strongly consider switching hosting companies. Graphic and image searches are going to increase in the coming months and years. You must know how it affects your traffic and your bottom line.