image naming

[zaneta]

Hello everybody,

I am trying to increase my website's positions and since I have plenty of images on it, I want to take advantage of it and make their names and paths more "keyword-dense".

Do you have suggestions on what would be a good name and path for an image in order to rank high in an image search, especially the one of google?

Also, what is your opinion about image searches, is it indeed a good way to bring more visitors into a website?

Thank you very much!
Zaneta

[mona]

Hi, zaneta. You're generally not going to rank higher for using keywords in alt text, so just give them a name that accurately describes the image. As far as Google image search, it depends on what type of site you have and what kind of visitors you want. For example, if you have an adsense site about a celebrity, this might be a good way to bring in visitors.

[Kufu]

The only time an alt tag will help along an optimization is when the image is a link. Be careful not to spam using this technique; just put short descriptive text as your alt tag and you should do fine.

[leroybrown71]

I always add alt text to my thumbnails... some people say it helps in SEO, some people say it has no effect. It's only a very small effort so I'll continue to put it in there. No real harm done, eh?

[Kufu]

No real harm done, eh?

Well, if you inadvertently overdo it then you might get zapped for spamming. Try to keep the Alt tags short, and to the point.

[leroybrown71]

good point. I know better, but I guess the newer people may not. thanks for pointing it out for them.

LB

[getxb]

Can anybody suggest some tips on seo friendly naming conventions for images? Say I have an image which signifies world wide web. How shall I name this image?

i.world-wide-web.gif or
ii.worldwideweb.gif or
iii.worldwide-web.gif.

Please suggest.

Regards,
getxb

[leroybrown71]

I think all of those are read the same by search engines. I could be wrong - can anyone with more exp. confirm that?

LB

[Kufu]

getxb,

Image naming schemes like that are really time-wasting exercises. Concentrate your efforts elsewhere.

[getxb]

Thanks Kufu for your valuable suggestion.

[inerte]

Let's make a test :)

"world wide web"

[images.google.com...]

Results 1 - 20 of about 150,000

1st image:

name: welcome_web.gif
alt: no
text before: none
text after: <h1>Welcome to the World Wide Web</h1>
site type: educational

2nd image:

name: world-wide-web.jpg
alt: "Professional quality web sites at extremely competitive prices!"
text before: none (an image)
text after: lots, a sales pitch
site type: commercial

3rd image:

name: www.gif (image not in page, but linked)
alt: none, it's a link
text before: an anchor link (name="WWW")
text after: World Wide Web
site type: educational

4th image:

name: ed-global-connections.jpg
alt: "Global Enterprice from Robin Jareaux at www.example.com"
text before: none, but images and links and js
text after: "What in the World <BR>Is the Web?"
site type: tutorial from a commercial website

5th image:

name: WorldWideWebAroundWikipedia.png
alt: "Grafische Darstellung des WWW um en.wikipedia.org am 18. Juli 2004" (yay, it's german)
text before: a paragraph that starts with "World wide web"
text after: "Grafische Darstellung des WWW um en.wikipedia.org am 18. Juli 2004"
site type: German wikipedia

---------

Ok, enough :)

From that we can see that Google understand filenames and text after. There's no way to know what weight is given to each one precisely.

At least we know that except for the Wikipedia image, the number of inbound links are low. So, Pagerank or whatever algorithm is used to treat inbound links are probably not considered when raking images.

Which leaves us with alt, filename, text before and text after. From our five examples, we can see that the text "before" doesn't contain the keyword "world wide web". Only the text "after". The second example doesn't even have "world wide web" written at the page's body. But the file is named "world-wide-web".

So, considerations. If you want to appear high on Google images for "a couple keywords", my advice:

1) Name your file "a-couple-keywords.ext";

And, 2) Use the text "a couple keywords" right after the image.

Of course, the sample is too small, only 5 items from one search, but these two things seems to be considered more than others, at least on this case.

[Kufu]

I just think doing what you are proposing can possibly create more pitfalls than give anyone that extra edge.

Aside: maybe I should stop making posts here, since I try to use almost no images on my sites. :)

[Wlauzon]

Name the picture what it actually is usually seems the best way to go.

But that probably depends on what you are selling. If I do a Google search for pink kangaroo dolls, I expect to see pictures of pink kangaroo dolls, not green alligator dolls with the wrong name.

[getxb]

Name the picture what it actually is usually seems the best way to go.

But that probably depends on what you are selling. If I do a Google search for pink kangaroo dolls, I expect to see pictures of pink kangaroo dolls, not green alligator dolls with the wrong name.

Yeah thats a good point though I try to do it each time. I think we all try to select words which makes sense.

regards,
getxb

[martins71]

hello everybody

how do you get better position results?

a- <a href="url">keywords</a>
b- <a href="url"><image src="" alt="keywords"></a>

1-a
2-b
3-the same

[Artstart]

[q]a- <a href="url">keywords</a>
b- <a href="url"><image src="" alt="keywords"></a>[/q]

[Artstart]

Sorry accidenlty pressed submit.

"a" of course

[ellenweber]

There are many opinions as to how to generate more web traffic and still there seems to be a shroud over the real McCoy. Is it possible that big dollars behind the scenes control that process too. If so, who owns the search access? While I see many versions of how to increase traffic -- none seems too sure. What are your thoughts?

[kunwarbs]

To appear your images in Google Image Search, make sure you use RELEVANT TEXT in the closest proximity of your images. Google ranks the images on the basis on the text around the images. The image filename or ALT attribute play no role for image search.