eLearning Series
7. Naming Your Images for SEO Success
Even though search engines can’t read words inside graphics, they do use the name of the file and other contextual information to increase your rankings. One of the biggest missed opportunities is not naming images with search engine optimization in mind. I can’t tell you how many times I see a site that has the logo named: logo.jpg While that’s sufficient to display the logo in a browser, it’s much better to name the logo with descriptive keywords, such as: customer-paradigm-logo.jpg.
Another way to look at this is to look at this image name out of context: pass-med-425.jpg The image name, pass-med-435.jpg doesn’t tell you much about what is in the image. However, this image does seem to give a search engine a bit more information: passover-in-moab-utah-2008.jpg If you search for “passover in moab” in Google, see what comes up first.
If you want to further increase the relevancy, you can create a folder (also with keywords) that can help you increase keyword density on a page. For example, placing an image in a directory like this will give you more relevancy than in a more non-descriptive folder: /search-engine-optimization-services/seo-services-header-logo.jpg. Yes, it takes a little bit more time and effort for someone to type out a longer image name and keep it organized into different folders on your website. But our research has found that increasing the relevant keywords in your images is a sure fire way to increase your search engine rankings.