Why File names are important for SEO

How you name your files when you upload them can play an important role on your SEO rankings

How does google know the difference between your product images and an image of a tree. Most camera’s and images you get from your photographer have a standard file name format such as image35234.jpg when you have a piece of content like an image with a generic file name you’re not provide it enough context to what the image actually is or represents. You can use this to your advantage by providing it a proper file name which will give a searching proper context to what it is.

Some guidelines to proper file names to improve your SEO are as follows:

• The name of your image should be relative to the subject of your article. If you’re writing about cars you uploaded images of cars, those images should have the keyword cars in them like “blue-car-by-joes-auto-repair-shop.jpg”
• You should also provide an ALT title, description and other meta information provided by your CRM to expand the context of which the image your displaying on your website.
• For an e-commerce store this is also an effective tool to name your images according to what the product is.

When these rules are followed you stand a good change to rank your site better and also earn the image map pack for search results. This means if someone searches for blue and red striped beach ball google might show suggested images based on this and they could decided to use your website as a sample which will bring you more organic growth.