Best Optimization for Images

Terrie - I always separate words in image names with hyphens or underscores. The search engines treat hyphens and underscores as spaces so you get credit for each word, for whatever weight the search engines give to that portion of their algorithm.

You can run the words together, but there's no guarantee the search engines will break them down into meaningful words, they could be seen as just a meaningless assemblage of letters. I also make sure most images have a keyword or key phrase in the name, and be sure to use alt text with a keyword or key phrase as well.

Naming your directories with a keyword or key phrase it's another optimization option. For example, I don't know what this lake explosion is you used for an example, but for demonstration purposes lets say you're trying to optimize the page for disaster photos. Don't just put the photos in a directory named images, name the directory disaster_photos instead.

With an image, you actually have four separate search engine optimization options: the image name, the alt text, the directory name, and the title text. A fifth optimization is what the text on the page near the photo says. If it's relevant to the image and has relevant keywords and latent semantic terms, all the better.

Hope that helps.