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Importance of image names?

by alexandersmith
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey everyone,

I'm currently designing a new website, and alongside the blog posts are many image galleries.

All these images are taken from royalty-free sites, and credit will be given to the original source, but I'm wondering how important it is to re-name these images.

For example, most of them have weird file names, that don't contain a keyword, or use a lot of jumbled up text.

So far I have been renaming them manually to be variations on the main page keyword, but is it really necessary?

There are a few thousand images, so it's a lot to do

Thanks!
Alex
#image #importance #names
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I'd rename the images.

    You can batch rename images offline on Win7 by placing a large amount of images in a single folder on your PC, selecting all the images at once & then right click, rename. That will rename all images with the same name but it's better than random names that have nothing to do with the image subject or your site.
    • my-keyword(1).jpg
    • my-keyword(2).jpg
    • my-keyword(3).jpg
    • etc...

    Maybe break the images up into categories & the keywords can be more focused per each batch of renamed images.

    If you only had a few images I'd say give them better names but renaming thousands of images each by hand is obviously not an option.

    The image name is a very weak ranking factor but since it's a new site, might as well rename them before uploading them to a host.
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  • Profile picture of the author alexandersmith
    Thanks!

    I did think of doing the method you suggested, but my only concern would be whether that would ne a negative ranking factor having so many similar names?

    Thanks,

    Alex
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by alexandersmith View Post

      Thanks!

      I did think of doing the method you suggested, but my only concern would be whether that would ne a negative ranking factor having so many similar names?

      Thanks,

      Alex
      Well, you're not going to rank thousands of images like that.

      You could still do the batch image rename for the bulk of the images & then rename a few images per each main image keyword that you want to rank.

      Bottom line is, the strongest ranking factor for images is strong followed backlinks pointing directly at the image URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kherk Roldan
    Having an image in every blog post are very important because hey emphasize the title or subject of the post and also It’ll trigger a visitor to read the post, as the first view isn’t just text. Hope it helps
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