SEO Naming Conventions

Naming Conventions

Recently I was teaching a class on SEO to a group of start-up businesses.  They were all dumbfounded when I began to explain that the file names and naming conventions of the images and photo’s on their sites have an effect on the overall ranking and SEO…

Use Actual Words

If you use only actual words with hyphens, it make the URL, file, or photo names easier to read by both humans and search engines. Keep it short and simple, this also helps you with the organization of your files and photos. It wouldn’t hurt to keep them memorable, as long as it remains relevant to the site. Always remember relevance and quality content is utmost concerns to Google and any other search engine.

Avoid Special Characters

Start all of your file names with lowercase letter. Many applications allow the use of special characters, and upper case letters, however, many server “Operating Systems” do not handle them well. It can affect both load times and accuracy.

Limit the characters in your file names to lowercase letters from “a to z” periods, underscores, hyphens and numbers “0 through 9” and always avoid spaces.

SEO File & Photo Examples

Here are two fun examples; I’m sure by now you are starting to get the point.

file name : eye-model.jpg

 

file name : 188Ed6BF~4D7C=4E6DBE5210D2CAC6FD17w974ns.jpg

In Conclusion

I know you have heard me say it many times, but ask yourself “how does it enhance” the experience of the end user? Is it based on quality content, do the images improve the site?

Make any of your SEO efforts simple for both viewers and search engines. Then your site will be well organized, and rank better than the competition. It is all really just common sense; make your Search Engine Efforts count, and your client will love you.

And, always use a professional SEO firm like E2-ts.com to improve your Ranking!