How to Create Google Image Sitemap?

Google sitemap for images is an XML sitemap file and is an extension for Google XML sitemap. Image sitemap generators can be utilized to generate them and submit them to search engines like Google. As we discussed in our previous articles, images are important for websites and blogs. It is equally important to get them indexed by search engines. The position of your images in Google image search results are based on many factors. As we discussed in the article top 5 Google Image SEO Tips, you need to apply Google image seo techniques and best practices to achieve better results.
Google Image Sitemap has an important role in optimizing the images and getting them indexed by search engines. Google’s image extensions for Sitemaps help the webmasters to create sitemaps for images used in their blogs and websites. Once created you can submit the image sitemaps to search engines like Google and that give Google additional information about the images on your site’s URL.

Google Sitemap for Images

Like the video sitemap, the image sitemap is an extension of Google sitemap and it has additional xml elements and attributes. You can either create them manually or use some third party tools to generate them. Image sitemap information can be part of your main content sitemap. But it is always better to keep a separate sitemap for images, content and sitemap for videos.
The image sitemap basically lists all the images that are part of that page. You can include all relevant images here so that Google can index them. According to Google webmaster tools, you can list up to 1,000 images for each page in the sitemap.
The sample structure of the sitemap looks as seen below.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
  xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">
 <url>
   <loc>http://yoursite.com/samplepage.html</loc>
   <image:image>
     <image:loc>http://yoursite.com/sampleimage1.jpg</image:loc>
   </image:image>
   <image:image>
     <image:loc>http://yoursite.com/sampleimage2.jpg</image:loc>
   </image:image>
 </url>
</urlset>

Free Tools to Generate Image Sitemaps

There are few free image sitemap generator tools available to download or to use online. Few of them are listed below.
If you are a WordPress user then you can try the below mentioned plugins to generate the image sitemap.

• Udinra All Image Sitemap
• XML Image Sitemap

The following free tool supports images in sitemaps.

• G-Mapper

After generating the sitemaps using these services you must validate them for its structure validity before submitting the same to search engines.