Optimizing your website’s SEO is essential, but you might not realize that naming images also counts. You’re potentially missing out on many SEO enhancement opportunities. Even captions under images can greatly impact SEO.
You want to use keywords in the image names to boost SEO. Doing so increases natural traffic from Google image searches and raises your website’s place in SEO rankings. You need to use clear, correct phrasing to achieve this.
This guide will show you some essential naming conventions to boost your SEO. Make sure to keep reading if you want to learn more.
Why Images are Important for SEO
Optimizing the names on your website’s images can come with plenty of benefits. It can take a lot of time, but the results are well worth it. Here are all the reasons why images are essential for SEO:
- Improves time on your pages and scroll depth
- Engages users with visuals
- Encourages visitors to share your pages on social media
- Adds more keyword use
- Increases traffic from Google Image searches
Best SEO Practices for Naming Images
Before you start renaming all of the images on your website, you’ll want to know the best SEO practices for doing so. Otherwise, you could accidentally harm your SEO instead. Here’s what you should know while naming all of your images.
Use Your Keywords
You’ll want to ensure you use the keywords you identified for the article content. You should name the images using keywords when you save them, then add captions under them when you have them on your website.
For example, “best SEO practices for naming images” would be a keyword in this article. We can apply it to images to get all of the above benefits.
Don’t Overuse Keywords.
However, it’s also very important that you don’t keyword stuff on your website. Google wants to offer users a good experience, so they won’t increase your ranking if they notice keyword stuffing.
People using screen readers struggle navigating images and websites when the alt text contains random keywords that don’t provide context or information.
If you use your keywords properly, Google will reward you with better SEO rankings. Keeping the user’s experience in mind will help you make great content and name your images appropriately.
Don’t Forget To Design for Users.
Many people forget about the user’s experience when working on their SEO. If you only design for search engines, it will hurt your SEO.
Google recommends that you do the following when naming your images:
- Use a good URL structure
- Don’t embed your important text in the images
- Always provide the images with ample and clear context
Recognize SEO Opportunities
Next, you’ll want to identify all of your SEO-naming opportunities, including:
- The image title appears when you mouse over the image.
- Alt attribute/text: It appears when the image doesn’t load correctly. It’s also what screen readers use.
- URL/filename: Don’t use auto-generated names or random letters and numbers in your image names. The site uses the filename as the image URL when you place it on your website. The filename is a great place to add keywords.
- Nearby text: Google also considers text surrounding images for SEO.
- Captions: The text you put under the image gives it more context.
It can take a while to make adding your keywords to these areas a habit. You’ll want to learn how to accurately use each of these SEO-naming opportunities to increase your site’s value to the users.
Naming Images for SEO
You’ll want to learn how to properly name your images for SEO. Here’s what you can do.
- Remove “stop words” when adding keywords to images. For example, if you have the keyword phrase “optimize images for SEO, remove the word “for.”
- Use hyphens in URL names. So, you’d write your keyword phrase as “optimize-images-seo.”
- Include words from specific subtopics in the name.
- Add numbers to the end of image names that are purely for decoration.
- Add the word “statistics” to charts after a hyphen.
- Add the word “step” and a counter to images that have to do with step-by-step content. For example, “optimize-images-seo-step-1” is a great name for an image.
Images only there for decoration don’t need to follow this naming practice. However, it’s always a good idea, just in case Google recognizes the image as something more relevant to your written content.
Using Keywords in Alt Text
Alt text is very important to include on your website. It makes it much more accessible and can even boost your SEO.
You don’t want to make it too long; clear and concise is best. You also don’t need to remove the stop words when making titles for your alt text. It should look something like this: “Optimize Image for SEO Step 1”
Final Thoughts
Optimizing the names on your images for SEO can take a lot of time and dedication. However, you’re sure to receive boosts in traffic when you do it. Visitors to your site will appreciate the added accessibility.
