Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Image naming best practices?
-
While I have found many good sources of information for naming images for SEO purposes, I'm having trouble finding an up-to-date, exhaustive and authoritative source for image names, alt tags, etc. For instance...
- Max characters for image name?
- Max hyphens?
- How descriptive should you be? "ice-cream-flavors-icon_._jpg" or "ice-cream-flavors.jpg" or simply "ice-cream.jpg"
- How similar should the image name, alt text and page title be?
- At what point are you overusing a keyword? Rules to follow?
- So much more, but you get the idea!
Anyone have a good reference or an answer to all things related to images and SEO? Thanks!
-
1. Name the image what is showing in the picture
2. Describe briefly what the picture is or what it means in alt text
3. Make sure to allow your images folder to be crawled in robots.txt. It would be a shame to go through all that work and have the image folder blocked
4. Mark up your images with schema: http://schema.org/ImageObject
-
Remember that we are moving toward consumer friendly content. So putting in a ton of keywords that are just for crawling purposes will not win on Google, you must provide value. But, do not misunderstand keywords are valuable.
PAGE TITLE: Should be geared toward high value keywords; List of Ice Cream Flavors, Best Ice Cream Flavors.
IMAGE NAME: Long Tail Keywords; Good Old Vanilla Ice Cream, Best Ice Cream Flavors in Summer. Ice Cream Flavors With A Little Twist.
IMAGE ALT:Should be specific to the picture. Remember people most people only look at the first page in a search result but when looking for images they tend to search through 2-4 pages (and can do it in seconds)!
I use the On-Page Optimization Tool in Moz to determine my page score for a specific keyword.
All the best,
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
-
SEO Implications of using Images for Article Titles
Hi guys! New to Moz Pro. I just recently completed an online course with Moz... I have a client who is writing some new content for their site, and we are approaching it with SEO in mind. I was wondering about using an image with text on it as the article title, instead of an actual "text on the page" title. Wondering if that's going to "cost" us anything, SEO wise. I guess we could use alt-text/title/description fields to make sure the keywords are crawlable for our article title but do they have less "weight" than a standard title? How does that work? Hope my question makes sense. Article header attached mB0PXsA.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | JakeWarren1 -
City Name in URL structure
I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Clickable Images Question
This may seem like a minor issue but it is something that has been bothering me. When I write a blog post and place images within the text, is it better to have the image linking to nothing or link to the image url. I am guessing that unless I wish the image to rank for a certain keyword then it is not worth it linking to the image url. But would just like clarification if there is a more deep seated reason. Thanks Mark
On-Page Optimization | | markmiton0 -
NOINDEX, FOLLOW on product page - how about images indexing?
Hi, Since we have a lot of similar products with duplicate descriptions, I decided to NOINDEX, FOLLOW most of these different variants which have duplicate content. However, I guess it would be useful in marketing terms if Google image search still listed the images of the products in image search. How does the image search of Google actually work - does it read the NOINDEX on the product page and therefore skip the image also or is the image search completely dependent on the ALT tag of any image found on our site? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | speedbird12290 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSEODR0 -
Hyphens in Domain Name
I have a client who is a business broker. I have just begun working with them, and they are trying to determine the best domain name to use - they have several. business-broker-alabama.com vs businessbrokeralabama.com Which one of these has more value? I know that search engines have somewhat devalued keywords. The first one probably has a little more SEO value, but is going to be a drag in terms of marketing -- saying "business hyphen broker hyphen alabama" is going to get old for them. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | csmithal0 -
What is the best way to format an xml sitemap?
I am wondering if the urls should be in alphabetical order or if they should be set out in a way that reflects the sites hierarchy? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Webat0 -
How long should anchor text be? Best practice for anchor text length?
site: http://www.cerritosnissan.com/index.htm On the bottom of this homepage there is an seo content area, basically right under where it says "orange county nissan" welcomes you. The internal links in this area are very long and I'm wondering why they would do this - is there any benefit to making anchor text longer? The longer the anchor text, the less each part of that anchor text passes link juice. For example, for a page about their reviews, the anchor text of the link is "See what Cerritos Nissan customers have to say about their experience at this great Orange County Nissan Dealership.". If I would have done this the anchor text would be "Cerritos Nissan Reviews" or just plain "reviews" as the anchor text. Why would they be using such long keywords as anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
0