Image filenames important for SEO? Or not anymore?

Ask Me Anything Q&A SEO Office Hours
1

Image filenames important for DEO?

At one point they used to be. Now I hear that’s filenames are not relevant to SEO. Thanks

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Hi @Hill_Station

It’s David from SearchPie. Thank you for raising your question in our SEO Office Hours event!

Yes, image filenames still carry some SEO value, though much less weight than they used to. They are a “minor signal” rather than a strong ranking factor now.

Google now recommends using the same image URL (i.e. same filename) when reusing the same image across pages to help with crawling, you can find out more about it here.

In addition, Google’s Image SEO best practices recommend using filenames that are “short, but descriptive” (for example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg vs IMG00023.JPG). That said, Google doesn’t (to my knowledge) treat filename as a strong differentiator for overall page rankings. It’s more of a supporting signal for image indexing and image-search visibility.

To conclude, filenames alone won’t move the needle much. The biggest SEO gains come from:

  • Writing clear, keyword-relevant alt text

  • Placing images in the right page context (headings, captions, surrounding text)

  • Ensuring fast loading with optimized formats (WebP, lazy load, etc.)

And a small suggestion for you: Always use descriptive filenames for new uploads, but don’t stress about renaming old images unless they’re on key product pages.

Hope that this helps!

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Thanks a ton, David!
This is most helpful!!

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