Thumbnail Images and SEO

[smiffy]

I've been reading the SEO pages here and elsewhere on the web, and I've read that it can be beneficial to have image names reflect the image content.

I'm about to add thumbnail images to most of my products, and wanted to know if these images are actually referenced anywhere, and if the search engines would actually see them.

Obviously they will appear in the search results, and the shopping cart, but these aren’t things the search engine spider will do.

Any comments would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[pinbrook]

If you are just about to create your thumbnail images them yes go ahead and give them descriptive names.

In my view its one of those icing on the cake things you can do for SEO. You can't not benefit from doing this.

[Mark H]

As of last year it was better to use hyphens not underscore ie outdoor-patio-set.jpg

This was (and probably still is) more Google friendly - your images should appear in a Google image search, and a lot of people use the image search even when shopping because you can literally see the results.

[Duncan Rounding]

They will also then appear in Google Images which can be botha good thing and a bad thing - as they can then also be found for hot-linking quite easily. I

I agree it's an incing on the top type of thing - personally I find it easy to manage the store using the product reference as at the least the beginning few characters of the image name.

[simonwar]

Didn't someone have a fix for hot-linking.

Not absolutely sure what hot-linking is, (i get the jist but a better explanation would be tidy - any offers), but as my site is full of images, I remember thinking I need that when i get around loads of other stuff.

Mark you said:

As of last year it was better to use hyphens not underscore ie outdoor-patio-set.jpg

Is it simply better or is it a go no-go issue. This is because I have renamed all of my images in line with Smiffy's original theme, however I used underscore. Example http://www.esafetysigns.co.uk/acatalog/safecon_assembly_1x2_arroweasttext.gif

Seems a mouthful I know, but I have hundreds of them?

Thanks, Simon.

[Mark H]

I can't say for sure - take a look at:

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=20688


If you are using an external data source (eg excel worksheet) you could change the references to all the images using the substitute function in about 5 minutes, same for the actual image file names using a batch file renamer. If you are not using an external data source things could take a little longer.............

[pinbrook]

They will also then appear in Google Images which can be botha good thing and a bad thing - as they can then also be found for hot-linking quite easily.

Better to use robots.txt to stop images being indexed in the first place

Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$

[Mark H]

Is hot linking still an issue these days with v high bandwidth and server download allowances? Surely the SEO benefits outwiegh this.

[pinbrook]

I've disallowed image indexing for a few years now as i feel the benefits of not having people rip of your images out weights SEO.

I'm not convinced there is any disadvantage to seo as my html pages still get indexed

[los_design]

I've disallowed image indexing for a few years now as i feel the benefits of not having people rip of your images out weights SEO.

I'm not convinced there is any disadvantage to seo as my html pages still get indexed

Same here Jo

We always block by bot txt and see no detriment to results.

[acompton]

Didn't someone have a fix for hot-linking.

I found a switch on my website's cpanel that disables hotlinking (ie. references to your image files that are coming from sites other than your own).

Alan Compton
www.greenknightgames.co.uk
Great board games and cards games you won't find in the High Street

[simonwar]

Hi,

Jo you said use....

Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$

Where do you put this? If you excuse the expression, Simon.