This one super simple trick is a serious SEO quick win! Giving your images SEO friendly file names can make a real difference.

Why Are Images Important For SEO?

According to True List, 10.1% of all Google traffic is Google Image Searches, with 11.5k image clicks per second. That’s a lot. With so many people searching for images, it is worth making your images discoverable.

Images can boost organic traffic, but they also make websites more user friendly and interesting.

About Image File Names

Do you pay attention to your image file names? If not, they will probably be called something like IMG-32043.JPG or IMAGE4.JPG or Untitled1.JPG.

The problem with a generic file name is that it is a missed opportunity to tell Google what your image is. If you make this one tiny change, you give each image an extra chance of being found and shown to people searching for relevant topics.

Best SEO Practices For Image File Names

Be Descriptive

According to Google’s best practice guides, the best names for image files are descriptive ones with no more that 5 words.

Use Hyphens To Separate Words

Just renaming a photograph with your descriptive words is not quite enough. If you label an image “Red Notebook”, Google won’t recognise your title as separate words. Instead, the advice is to separate each word with a hyphen, like this: “Red-Notebook.jpg”.

Don’t use underscores as they also aren’t always recognised.

Don’t Stuff Keywords

Keyword stuffing is the repetition or use of multiple keywords in one place, and it can negatively impact search engine rankings because it is considered spammy. This is also true for image file names. Therefore, it is so important not to stuff your file name with multiple keywords. here are some examples of this, using our red notebook:

“Buy-This-Best-Selling-Red-Notebook.JPG”

“Red-Notebook-Journal-Stationery-Book-Writing-Paper-Notecard.JPG”

Summing Up

This is important, not just for your own website images, but for your Etsy listings as well. If you can get into the habit of renaming your files as you save them, you are onto a winner. SEO is all about the little wins adding up to create a big difference over time. It’s not an overnight, immediate result, but it is worth the effort.