Did you know the keywords that are used in an image file name are taken into consideration for SEO ranking? That’s right! Google uses the keywords in an image file name to gain textual understanding of that image. While Google’s documentation doesn’t say whether image filenames are ranking factors, it does say that Google takes note of them in order to help figure out what the image is about. For that reason it’s recommended by Google that images be given meaningful and thematic filenames.

Google’s image guidelines specify that:

“Likewise, the filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image.For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG.If you localize your images, make sure you translate the filenames, too.”

For example, if you have an image of the all-new Toyota Corolla 2023 that you want to display on the English version of your website, name the image something along the lines of Toyota-Corolla-2023.png. If you want to display the image on the Chinese version of your website, name the image “豐田卡羅拉”.

How Important Are File Names For SEO?

John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, states that:

“We do recommend doing something with the filenames in our image guidelines. So having descriptive filenames is good. But I don’t think you would see a significant change if you already do the other things around images, like the alt texts, the text surrounding the image. Those are really, really strong signals. And the filename itself is often… it’s kind of from a technical point of view. This is what we called it, but it doesn’t provide any real unique information, usually. Of course, if you don’t do the alt text, or if you don’t have good surrounding text, then, of course, the filename might be the only place where you mention what this image is about. But if you do the rest, then usually the filenames are okay.”

Would Changing Image File Names Improve SEO?

According to Mueller, changing image file names has minimal impact on SEO. Changing the filename of images that have already been crawled and indexed has a minimal benefit, to the point that it wouldn’t be visible.

That said, we would still recommend renaming all the file names; including relevant keywords in image file names, alongside other on-site SEO optimization implementations, can collectively improve your website search rankings!