How important are image file names
-
Hi,
How important do you think the image file names are for image search?
I know it used to be the best practice a while ago but is it still important?Thanks in advance,
JJ
-
Thanks guys - I really appreciate your quick responses to my silly question:)
JJ
-
From my own experience, I would say the images that send us the most search traffic are those where the file names have been labelled correctly rather than autogenerated such as 33456789.jpg. I would certainly suggest there is some correlation between filename and search performance, although of course there are other factors to considered. As a recommendation, I'd certainly suggest file names are important although I couldn't put a measure of quite how important. There's certainly no reason I can see for us to stop labelling filenames correctly.
-
Extremely important (and will continue to be). Also, continue to use alt names and meta info.
It's also good to have good naming convention for image files on your site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
HTML Copy in Image Alt Text Field
Hi all, A quick question regarding HTML copy in Image Alt Text fields. An extended client has some landing pages containing infographics, but contrary to our recommendation - no intro copy or surrounding copy was used. The infographic was simply placed on the page, and all of the text of the infographic was placed into the Image Alt Text field. As far as I know, Google would still see that content in the Alt Text field and attribute it to the Infographic, although this would not be sufficient enough of an effort for the page to rank for any of the content used in that field. I'd just like to check that I am correct? And as a consequence - we should insist that they include some copy with the infographic, or alternatively, use HTML text overlays on the infographic instead of flat text in the image itself? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Saatchi_HU0 -
Is it OK to shorten your brand name in your title tags
If your title tag is over 55 characters, is it generally OK or good practice to abbreviate your brand name (at the end of the title tag) for the sake of the other keywords in the tag?
On-Page Optimization | | AliMac261 -
Image alt tags shouldn't contain keywords?
Hi Everyone, I've been informed recently that keyword within your image alt tags can be a trigger for penguin if you have your keyword mentioned too often on the page (over-optimisation). I'm not sure I understand why though, the reason for this is, we have a page which features a picture and a description of a product. The page title, heading, a mention in content and image alt all contain a keyword which is the product name. I've been told to remove these alt tags but aren't alt tags important for screen readers and other W3C complacency issues, so removing the product names from the alt (which also happens to be the keyword for the product pages but is best describing what the image is) would make these image useless to users with certain disabilities, so if its true that doing this can be a negative signal isn't this breaking googles guidelines by not providing good content for those users? Would it be better to remove these alt tags or attempt to remove keyword elsewhere on the page? or can anyone suggest something else? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | AMA-DataSet0 -
Replacing text with images
Hello, My client is a "cheap calls" site which is offering calls to around 300 countries in the world. The pages for each country are almost the same, as they are mostly terms and conditions of making a call and explanation of the process how to do it. The copy is quite long (more than 850 words) and the country name is repeated about 26 times in the text. The country name and the phone number is the main difference between the pages, which makes them almost the same. I have recommended to add testimonials to each country and towns within the country, but I am afraid it will not dilute the similarity between the pages enough for Google to stop seeing them as duplicated. Also the client do not exactly rush to publish the testimonials for every country. The rankings are not too bad and all seems fine, but in the long term I know we need to do something. I am not sure if the client would agree to shorten up the copy, as they believe in old style seo with keyword stuffing and bolded keywords but I would like to overcome that problem with exchanging the most of the copy with an image. I would write a new copy for each page making it unique (around 2-3 paragraphs) and the rest would be an image stating exactly the same thing as the copy now to provide the same amount of info to the user. Theoretically it should help to resolve this problem, but would like to check if anyone has done something like that and if it worked/may work. Are they any other implications?
On-Page Optimization | | ThinkingJuice0 -
70 Domain Names Point to 70 Nearly Identical Inner Webpages
I have a new SEO client; his website has never been optimized. There are 70 domain names involved with this one website. Each domain name points to an exact replica of the main page, other than the fact that a small content box has different info in it, and sometimes the header graphic is different. So, 70 webpages that are 5% different from each other and 5% different from the main page. How badly is this issue affecting this website's ability to rank well, and what is the best way to solve this?
On-Page Optimization | | netsites0 -
How important is it to include the target keyword phrase in the page URL?
If I want to target a keyword phrase to a particular phrase, but do not want to change the URL of that page, will that negatively impact my rankings? I am also wondering if I can get around it by creating a new, short URL that 301 redirects to the original URL. Would that be as effective as including the keyword in the original URL?
On-Page Optimization | | susannajbost0 -
Image optimization
howdy guys, I am tryign to help my dad out with his SEO for his existing LP. its been created for "conversions" however not really made for SEO. Anyways, he has all these images that have abs no title,alt, or desc tags on ANY images. some of the images are part of the header and some are images of people etc. there are about 30 images. and the site is all in html. Would it be a good idea to change EVERY image or just a few and target some branding keywords? thanks again guys, hope to hear back soon
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
I have a direct question about file structure.
This question is about a new file structure and SEO friendly URL's. Does a file name make a difference? I have a direct question about file structure. Our old site was formated with a URL of http://rousechamberlin.com/about_us.aspx our new site is structured http://rousechamberlin.com/AboutUs/ no file no extension. As the SEO guy of the company and not the programmer my feeling is this is killing us. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?
On-Page Optimization | | HeadWebChef0