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,
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
What is the safest way to redirect for best SEO benefits?
What is the safest way to redirect for best SEO benefits? Example: loodgieter-aanhuis.nl -> loodgieters-ambacht.nl Does someone have any technical information on how to (root) redirect for best SEO practices?
On-Page Optimization | | hans-keeren0 -
How to get a mobile thumbnail image next to the search result?
Hey! I noticed the last few months that a lot of google searches now show an image next to your result when on mobile. i managed to get my listing to show an image before but I made some changes to the image and site and can’t seem to get Google to ahow the new image (or any image). I’ve added the image to schema mark up and still no luck. Wouod ahyone have any advice on how to get the image picked up, or st least help increase the odds? The site is https://tourstoniagarafalls.com and you can see it on search (for me it shows on the bottom of page 1) for the keyword “Niagara Falls tours“. Thanks again!
On-Page Optimization | | Originaladam0 -
Can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type im trying to rank for?
Hello, if I am trying to rank for a service type and the exact phrase is in the companies name, can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type? Seizing the opportunity to get another mention of the businesses name...two birds with the one stone if you will... For example, "lawn cutting" being the service type but the company's name is Paul's lawn cutting. Could i put Pauls Lawn Cutting in the image alt text, or just stick to lawn cutting? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Gavinn0 -
How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?
Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!
On-Page Optimization | | Dreamrealemedia0 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Is there any benefit to removing brand name from the title tag?
I just signed up for Moz recently, and have noticed that in my crawl errors, I have hundreds of issues with my title tag being too long. My business is selling prints for landscape/travel/nature photography, and I've built these pages dynamically to where the title tag for pages selling individual photos has the title of the photo for sale followed by a hyphen and then the brand name. The same goes for gallery pages "Gallery Name | Brand Name". Would it be worth it to shorten the title tags by removing the brand name from these pages? Or will that actually harm more than help? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | shannmg10 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
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