When people think of search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing always come to mind first. However, YouTube is the second ranked search engine on the web, ahead of both Yahoo! and Bing. The point is, images and video are everywhere on the web and it is important to be optimized for both.

While search engine spiders cannot read the content of video and images, they can be optimized in a way that is effective. It is important to communicate as much information as you can to the search engines about each graphic or media piece that you use on your site.

Google Image Search uses the file name and the alt tag to determine what the image is all about. Other video search engines such as YouTube and Viddler need help to find out what your video is about so they can show it to interested viewers and fans. Make sure that you take full advantage of these powerful streams of traffic. On Friday, I will outline some guidelines you can follow to optimize your videos and pictures.