WP SEO Tips: Names Have Meaning

Comments

1. John Kirk (1 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 9:04 am

   Jonathan

   I very useful post. Image naming is considerably underused – even by many experienced webmasters. Few people seem to appreciate just how popular image searching is on Google.

   Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

   John
2. Ajay (72 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 9:12 am

   I’ve disabled image indexing on my websites because I realized it caused a large number of hotlinks. I do have the Hotlink protection on, but somehow I’m not comfortable with all my images being indexed, especially photographs.
3. Ashish Mohta (14 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 9:34 am

   AJAY,but what’s the problem u are avoiding abt ..can u explain a little more
4. Ajay (72 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 9:54 am

   I don’t want my photographs searchable, more like a privacy concern. Hence they all have weird numbered names and I also have the image search disabled.
5. CT (1 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 10:34 am

   Most people think image searchbots far more sophisticated than they are. There’s an assumption that they can, indeed, see the images, when really all they’re doing is searching for the nearby text and image filename to suss out what the image actually is. It works pretty well, obviously, but not even close to perfect.

   I always name my image files to something relevant. Not so much for SEO, although it’s certainly worked out that way, but for my own filing system.
6. Toxic (3 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 10:37 am

   Is it not better to use hyphens (-) though than underscores (_) when seperating the words in the name, like WP does with uri.
7. Jeriko One (4 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 10:43 am

   Actually, the filename isn’t that important, or to say unrelevant. For Google’s Image Search (and possibly others as well) is the alt parameter in the img-Tag is of much more value.

   Take this example: Every result is made up from the content of the alt parameter, not the filename.
8. drmike (10 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 11:46 am

   Why not just use alt and title tags for your images? Google and the other search engines pick up on those as well.
9. Jonathan (83 comments.) says:

   2/12/2007 at 2:44 pm

   Toxic: I’ve been experimenting with the underscores and dashes for image names. I think mostly I did it because it was habit to use the underscore and easier, but I’ve been forcing myself to try the dash as well. Additionally, there are not many results in that search. I rank fairly high for a lot of image results so I’m on the first page — which is what SEO is all about.

   Drmike: Alt tags are good too, but filenames I’ve seen are more important to search engines.
10. David Culpepper (1 comments.) says:

    2/12/2007 at 3:06 pm

    Jonathan, Excellent post and great advice! I am relatively new to blogging and really looking forward to the rest of this series. Thank you!
11. wordpresser (1 comments.) says:

    2/12/2007 at 4:32 pm

    very good tips, thank you.
12. Paul Goscicki (1 comments.) says:

    2/12/2007 at 6:39 pm

    Anyone who thinks that alt tags and filenames mean a lot to Google image search should watch Human Computation:
    http://video.google.pl/videopl.....0976635143

    No, really, do it now. It will open your eyes on how images are categorized. Sure, it’s good to have meaningful alt tags and filenames but they are not that important when it comes to image search on google.
13. CT (1 comments.) says:

    2/12/2007 at 8:20 pm

    I concur on ALT/TITLE tags not counting for much, Google-wise. I always use both tags on my blog, but never do so descriptively (not proper use, I know, but I like to keep it light). Yet search engines pick up my images and rank them highly regardless. Again, actual filenames carry more weight.
14. Elaine (1 comments.) says:

    2/12/2007 at 11:40 pm

    With my blog being one that is for my face and body art business, I include pictures of my work. I always name my images with real names and set up descriptive alt tags for the photos, both on the web site itself and the blog.
15. Rirath (14 comments.) says:

    2/12/2007 at 11:52 pm

    It’s worth noting that depending on your content, sometimes image searches aren’t exactly a good thing. Sometimes when people do an image search, all they want is that image — they don’t really care about your blog or post.

    That’s fine if part if your goal is delivering that image to the viewers, but perhaps not so good if you actually want people to stick around. Sometimes it can lead to a bandwidth drain.

    Also, Google Images updates very, very slowly to my understanding.
16. patung says:

    2/13/2007 at 12:26 am

    As other commenters suggested, red_bird_westcoast.jpg is useless, it’s one long nonsense word, something like redbirdwestcoast, use red-bird-westcoast.jpg, underscore is treated as a character, hyphen as a space.
17. Jonathan (83 comments.) says:

    2/13/2007 at 10:36 am

    Patung: I know where you’re coming from, but the results don’t lie. I’ve seen trippled traffic just from Google Images alone from my sites which mean that it is treating it with more care. I’m still testing for the underscore or dash in image names. I know for permalinks that’s how it’s treated, still figuring the images out though.
18. Elmer W. Cagape (1 comments.) says:

    2/15/2007 at 5:13 am

    Having to properly name your images with descriptive filenames doesn’t mean you are optimizing them for image search. It still helps optimize the page itself. We can tell search engines to skip search images at robots.txt.
19. Jonathan (83 comments.) says:

    2/18/2007 at 10:34 pm

    Elmer: I am in no way saying you should disregard the optimization for the rest of the page, I was just talking about SEO image optimization specifically — nothing to do with the rest of the page.
20. Farnoosh (4 comments.) says:

    6/14/2009 at 10:22 pm

    Hi, I am not sure if this is still being watched or updated. I am searching the same thing you mentioned here: Is it better for search engines searching for images to see a dash or an underscore in the image name? Does underscore get treated as a character,and dash as a space? Thank you so much!
    Farnoosh
    • Jonathan Dingman (83 comments.) says:

      6/14/2009 at 10:40 pm

      @Farnoosh

      definitely use dashes. Google has come out and blatantly said that dashes are better than underscores.

      this-image-is-a-green-tree.jpg

      that’d be a good example of dash usage.
      • Farnoosh (4 comments.) says:

        6/15/2009 at 8:16 am

        Thank you Jonathan for the prompt reply. Your advice shall be heeded :)!
        Best,
        Farnoosh

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