All Photo File Names Should Be Descriptive

Below you will find an article that Angie with Treasure Seekers Unite had posted for the members of the site to read. Visit Treasure Seekers Unite to see this article, what others are saying, and to visit with other blogs, and articles posted for the members.

We all know that item titles should be descriptive, yes. What I'm talking about here are the actual file names (photo.jpg) that you upload to your online store, website, or blog. Did you know that Google reads these too?

If someone searches Google and chooses to limit their search just to photos...and your photo is called ivory-pillar-candle.jpg it will show up! However, if your photo's file name is 12345.jpg it will not show up in this type of search.

SIDE NOTE: Google reads spaces as "%20" so if you upload a photo called "my photo.jpg" (notice the space?) the actual URL for this photo would be http://www.mysite.com/my%20photo.jpg - which causes a lot of links to be broken if they were not linked to properly. You should either use _ (underscore) or a - (hyphen) for any file that will be used in a URL. The hyphen is preferred because Google reads these as a keyword separator. The underscore, while it does prevent broken links, is treated just like another character and Google sees "tealight_candle" as "tealightcandle" with another character in between. Whereas, "tealight-candle" is read as two separate keywords.

Very interesting isn't it? But, it also makes sense, and I know I went back through some of my pictures I use for my listings that were going to be listed, and changed the names with them. Those that are listed I have left, but after reading this article I make sure to always name my pictures that will be used for my market places I list with.

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Take care everyone, and have a splendid day!

Thursday, February 24, 2011