WordPress image file names SEO question

[StephenWeigel]

I’m using a plugin to upload images directly from Adobe Lightroom to WordPress and while the process is very convenient it adds “wpid-“ to the beginning of every image file name, so my “seo-friendly-image-title.jpg” becomes “wpid-seo-friendly-image-title.jpg”. The plugin author claims that it’s a WordPress thing and there isn’t anything he can do about it, yet it doesn’t happen when using the same plugin to upload to the NextGen Gallery Plugin instead of the built in WordPress media manager. I’m not really a fan of NextGen though so I’d rather use the built in WordPress media management.  This is obviously an SEO forum not a WordPress troubleshooting forum, but I wanted to give a bit of background.

My question is whether that “wpid-” at the beginning of all my image file names is going to cause any sort of SEO issue. If not, I won’t worry about it, but if it does I’ll have to either find another plugin or just go back to exporting from Lightroom to the desktop and then uploading through WordPress. Thanks in advance for any input.

[Brian-H]

Are you trying to be found by people using google images? If not I wouldnt worry about it as your keywords description text is already in the file name but more important than that is to add a good alt tag to the images (a good one for real people but drop a keyword in where it fits naturally).

If you are looking to be found more by google images then alt tags are still your best friend and the bad thing is that recent google images search updates has meant that far fewer people click on to your site now as they can access the full image direct from google...but that's a different point.

[StephenWeigel]

I'm definitely using alt tags as far as making it easier to be found. My concern was more about any negative results from search engines for the way the file name would always have that wpid- in front of it.

But it sounds from what you're saying that as long as I practice good naming conventions in the part of the file name I can control, the extra "wpid-" in the front won't have any negative consequences?

[Brian-H]

I don't profess to know too much about image seo however my understanding is that the alt text and surround page text is the important bit not the file name (although it could well contribute).

I would not think there would be any negative seo effect. A lot of image file names are numbers or have things like thumbs/large/150px etc so it would be very common.

[Webdeal]

If you are really concern about "wpid" , you can open the plugin files and remove it , but of course you need to have some knowledge of php.

[StephenWeigel]

Alright, I'll just stick with it then. I think I've read that the file name does play a role, but I'll just make sure my alt text and page text is spot on and hopefully the rest will fall into place.

I did notice when doing a google search that a lot of the image file names were not "seo friendly" so obviously it's not an absolute requirement.

Thanks for your input.

[StephenWeigel]

I had thought about that, but unfortunately the plugin is for Lightroom, not for WordPress, so all the files are .lua files that when opened in Notepad++ don't seem easily modifiable.