Naming Conventions – SEO Tips (Part 8)

Posted by Matthew Berman On February - 4 - 2008

This is part 8 of my SEO Tips series. I am going to talk about an underused whitehat SEO technique. Properly naming images, folders (directories), and files (in some cases) can be a great way to easily improve your SERPS ranking. Here’s what to do:

Proper Image Naming: Image search traffic is something a good number of webmasters underestimate. Although users have to suffer through Google’s frame, your website still appears when they click on an image in the image search results. This means there’s a chance the user will like your site, and continue reading, and quite possibly become a loyal user.
That being said, the proper way to name an image is by using a very descriptive title separated by dashes (“-”). An example would be:

frog-jumping-off-rock.jpg

A few words that directly describe the picture is key. Even if you think no one would ever search for something like this, they will. Trust me, I’ve searched for some odd images in my time.

URL Structure (Folder Naming):

There are a few different methods of organizing your site in terms of complicated backend stuff I won’t get into right now. Regardless of your method, your URL structuring should stay fairly consistent. I like to use 2 or 3 levels of categories before the specific page, or specific image. Here are some examples:

www.basketballwebsite.com/basketball-players/kobe-bryant

OR

www.basketballwebsite.com/basketball-teams/los-angeles-lakers

OR

www.basketballwebsite.com/clothing/basketball-shorts

There’s some flexibility as to exactly how you level your categories (which categories are closer to the root) but you should always try to go broad to narrow. Also, remember that URL’s need dashes to represent spaces just like our image naming.

Many of you will be asking what to do since you already have a site with pages indexed. I know you don’t want to loose your search ranking for specific pages, but if you have to make a site-wide change to URL structure, remember to use 301 redirects in every instance.

That’s about it. These are some great examples of ways to improve the SEO on your site. Please feel free to email me about individual questions or comments.

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