Updating all product image file names to URL friendly names for SEO - good or bad idea?

[twilson90]

Currently all the images on my store are just a string of numbers with no textual description of the image itself, which I can't imagine does my image search rankings much good. That said they all have somewhat descriptive alt text.

Some of the images are not the greatest quality (800x800) so if I were to do this I'd make sure to provide some higher resolution images (2048x2048).
However the majority of these images have existed like this since 2013.

Would anyone recommend updating all image file names to URL friendly names that describe the image even if it breaks all existing links with search engines?
My primary concern is in improving SEO so I'm wondering if there is any real benefit to doing this.

[oliversinz]

Hi @twilson90 

Hope you're having a great day!

Search engines not only crawl the text on your webpage, they also crawl your images. Optimizing your images helps show off and display your images to shoppers.

Here are some tips to optimize your images so that they are found by search engines:

Optimize your alt attributes carefully. Alt attributes are the text alternative to images used when a browser can’t properly render them. They’re also used for web accessibility, meaning if a person with impaired vision is looking at your blog they will be read the alt text. Alt text is important for ecommerce stores and image SEO as it helps products show up in Google images. My advice here is to describe in plain language what’s in the image to help people with imparied vision have an idea what the image displays. In turn, this can also help your images rank. Instead of “facial toner 250ml” try “Image of Pixi’s Glow tonic facial toner in 250ml, a highly concentrated, invigorating facial toner to deep clean your pores”.

Name your images in plain language. This is the file name of your image when it’s saved to your computer. When you upload it, its web address will be the same. Ideally, it should match the keyword on the page. For example, if your page is about habanero hot sauce, you should save the image file name as “habanero-hot-sauce.jpg” (i.e., don’t name an image “298343798.jpg”). This means that alongside our product page appearing for queries “habanero hot sauce,” your product images hopefully also will appear under the images tab on search engines.

Ensure your images have descriptive alt text and filenames. Google Images now make up nearly 23% of all web searches.

[claricelin]

Hi @twilson90 

Not sure what you mean by "breaking all existing links with search engine"?

However, product images on your product image should ideally be labeled with URL friendly names that would be beneficial in SEO. The benefits would not be immediate as it takes time for Google to index those images. But for sure, having descriptive names that links to your product (name) would help Google to better understand how your store elements (pages, images etc) are related and overall gives an added SEO boost - that is if you want to fully optimize your store for the related product names, descriptive terms and attributes.

Cheers,

Clarice

[twilson90]

Hi @claricelin, thanks for your reply.

I mean I'm concerned about negatively affecting my search engine rankings by changing all the image file names.
Currently Google has indexed hundreds of these images.
When I change the URLs for each of these images there won't be a 301 redirect to tell Google that a particular image has been renamed, it'll just assume all the old images have been deleted and the updated images will be detected as new.

So can you say with any certainty that doing this won't negatively affect my search engine rankings for images and/or my site?

[claricelin · Accepted solution]

My question: what's your search rankings for your current images - given that they are not properly named in the first place? And if they are not properly named, are the rankings even valuable for your store, if that make sense?

In general, I recommend store owners to have their images labelled in accordance to the product they are selling and this is good SEO practice for all websites and stores.

With regards to your specific circumstances, I can't give you any guarantees on what will happen to your store without reviewing your store in details, given that you have a long history.

But I would say, this would likely remove those rankings that were not useful for your store in the first place (i.e. possible a drop) and start getting SEO juice that are more in alignment with the products and search terms you want your images/store/products to be ranking for.

Hope that makes sense.

[twilson90]

Thanks, that's what I assumed but it's good to have some one else corroborate it.