Image Optimization - File Name Important?

[EssEEmily]

I am currently working on a site with 100+ recipes that all have image file names that are relevant, but not optimized for keyword purposes. I'm wondering - from an SEO perspective - would it be worth my time to go back through all of the images and rename them with keywords in mind?

On my own site I have always done this as a "best practice" but I'm curious - does it make a difference to search engines? Does anyone have any recent research/experiences that they would like to share?

Thanks!

[MSSTORAGE]

In short, yes. I've always found them to be a benefit - essential on an image search ranking. Also don't forget your alt tags.

[GapUpInternetMarketing]

Hi Emily,

Yes, it does make a difference.  Think about it from Google's perspective.  If you're crawling a site and come across an image with no ALT tag, no title, and a name of C19823.JPG.  What could that image be?

Now imagine you're Google and you come across an image titled golden-retriever.jpg.  There's a pretty good chance that image is of a dog.  Especially if the content on the page is also about dogs.  The more clues that Google can use to figure out what a site is about the better.

Do a Google Image search for "golden retriever" and look at the file names.  Notice any similarities?

-Benjamin

[EssEEmily]

Thanks, Benjamin. That's a great way of looking at it. All of the images I looked at did have "golden retriever" in the beginning of the file name.

Plus bonus points because I got to look at puppies.

[MikeGracia]

Benjamin pretty much covered it I feel!

Remember, Googlebot is, well, a bot! To help Googlebot, and it's associated algorithms figure out what your images are about, you should ensure certain 'triggers' are well taken care of.

Filename is one such trigger, as is alt text (both mentioned by Benjamin already).

Additionally I would consider adding title tags to the images, and at times that you link to any of the images, use relevant anchor text too, as this can help.

Also consider using tags, for example, Paella Recipe as this can give an extra bit of help in regards to Google & other engines understanding what the image is all about.

Then if you are really wanting to go the extra mile;

Image sitemap submission to Google, to try to make sure big G finds all of your images! (see here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=178636 ) Note the tags that you can use, specifically the caption and title should be quite useful for image SEO etc

Hope that helps!

[gmellak]

YES! We've seen a significant drop in visits via google images when one of our clients eventually changed their file-upload-backend and files were named automatically like 445390348043534.jpg - we then added a separate module only to assure the naming is correct and useful, and are slowly recovering the lost google images visits.

[DanHill]

Another thing to consider is that if you do have an image ranking within the SERPS that you don't change the filename at all - I've seen that it takes google's bot(s) much longer to reindex an image that's filename has changed vs like some content change or meta title etc

[MikeGracia]

Daniel, I gave you a thumbs up, as I think that is a good point

It could help if you submit an image sitemap once the renaming has been done, or even impliment 301 redirects from the old image URL to the new ones, but unless you have an automated way of doing the redirects, it could be quite a long process to do them  manually!!!

[GapUpInternetMarketing]

Yes, when it doubt add puppies.  That always helps.

[EssEEmily]

Thanks everyone. It seems the consensus is to rename the files (assuming they aren't already ranking high with their current file name), ensure each one has proper alt text and submit an image site map to google.

I've got a busy Friday ahead of me!

Also, Mike - thanks for the tip on the caption tag. I hadn't thought of that. Every little bit of "google juice" helps. I'm going to give it a try!

[MikeGracia]

No probs, glad to help!

Hope you Friday doesn't drag too long due to all this!!!

[robertrRSwalters]

I would be intested in knowing what you guys think is the best way to name images?

say "rustic-oak-3-draw-bedside.jpg"

How long should the names be max and are hyphens ok do you think?