SEO and images

Calisonder · 12-21-2005, 11:41 PM

can someone please tell me if i should follow the standard SEO filename rule and name my images things like "web-hosting-image" with the dash, or should i do "web_hosting_image" with the underscore.

thanks in advance

minstrel · 12-21-2005, 11:50 PM

Using dashes rather than underscores might add a slight advantage, I think, though not much.

With images, it may depend on the type of site. For the average site, it probably doesn't matter much if you call it top_header.gif or top-header.gif because you're really not optimizing the page for those terms anyway.

On the other hand, it might not hurt for something like a real estate or travel page to use image filenames like villa-on-the-beach.jpg or vineyard-in-Sonoma-Valley.jpg -- again, it isn't going to make a huge difference either way but it might help a smidgen.

Calisonder · 12-21-2005, 11:56 PM

thankyou

webexpertz · 12-26-2005, 11:03 AM

You should use _ rather then dash"-". As i read this question i just went to the Google search engine and checked what they are using because we are all doing and following the rules which are Google Standards. I found on Froogle "http://froogle.google.com/frghp?hl=en&tab=nf&ned=us&q="

The Logo Itself has assigned _. But its hardly matter, but we should follow underscore for assigning names to images.

MadKad · 12-26-2005, 11:06 AM

LOL i dont even name my images with keywords or anything like that and it has never afected my rankings or SEO

webexpertz · 12-26-2005, 11:16 AM

Its good if you use appropiate image name because it would help you drive traffic through image search section of the search engine.

Second thing it easier to remember the name of image if you name it well.

This is called Image optimization.

MadKad · 12-26-2005, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webexpertz

Its good if you use appropiate image name because it would help you drive traffic through image search section of the search engine.

Second thing it easier to remember the name of image if you name it well.

This is called Image optimization.

hmm yer i like the sound of that but i really wouldnt like all my images in the image section on google people might nick them more

I, Brian · 12-26-2005, 11:38 AM

Use dash to separate keywords in images - that way, search engines can read the keywords being used to describe the image, and thus something of the keyword associations for the page.

Don't use underscore, unless you want to hide your keywords from search engines, as it'll likely appear as a single nonesensical word.