Images and SEO

Marketing
1

Hi all,

I’m new here, and relatively new to SEO.

We are currently using IE8 (poor us) at my workplace, we are migrating over to IE11 (still poor us) and have found my resized images appear poorly. So I have implemented a dynamic way to resize the images at the DOM level, but I lose my clean URL (src=“www.domain.com/images/construction-men-building-road.png”) it will be something like (src=
“www.domain.com/servlet/Image?id=X&dimension=Y”).

Now I’m not really worried about losing ranking on the image itself within google image search, but I am want to know if having URL like that for the image will affect the page rank itself? Keep in mind that the TITLE and ALT TITLE will be descriptive.

Reason I ask this as I saw the following in the ‘All you need to know about SEO’ guide:

How do I optimize an image for Google image search?

  1. Use the keyword in the ALT attribute
  2. Name the image with the keyword
  3. Put the image in a directory containing the keyword
  4. Put the image on a page about the keyword
  5. Link to a page using that image with the keyword in the URL

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

2

Hi Daniel, and welcome to the forums.

I’d say the most important thing is to have good alt text. Basically, search engines just need to know what your image is, and that’s the best way to tell them. If you have that in place - and good title text, as you’ve said you’re also using that - I don’t think you need worry much about keywords in filenames.

You might find this article and videos helpful:

2 Likes
3

Daniel,

Are you talking about the ranking of the image itself (that is, when someone searches for the actual picture)? If so, the change to the URL might have a very small effect, but it is likely to be fairly minor.

Or, are you worried about the the ranking of the page which hosts the picture? In that case, the effect of changing the picture’s URL will be absolutely negligible.

In both cases, I suggest that it is better to focus on the correct resizing of the picture, and not worry about any small effect that might have on SEO.

Mike

3 Likes
5

Thank you for your replies, very helpful! I am not worried about the image being ranked. Just the page the image is on.

Thanks again for your replies.
Daniel

6

I have some experience with photography websites. Which, surprise, are very heavy on photos.

How do you help them rank well? You make friends with all those photos and use them to your advance, that’s how.

Use your preferred keywords in the photo filenames. Your alt tags. And the text for your captions and photo credits. You could really go for the gusto and use those keywords in your domain names.

7

Before this wanders any further off-topic, please note that the question is not about how to rank an image-heavy website, but about whether changing the URL of an image will have a negative impact on the SERPs of the containing page.

9

Numbers 2 and 3 of your list don’t matter, so no need to worry.