What’s in a Name? Your Post Image Names Matter! – KYBITB Lesson #12
Nothing drives me battier than to go to pin an image and get something like this: “img4202.jpg”. Think that doesn’t happen? It totally does.
The SEO on these images is horrible, for starters. When you put an image on your post, you want the name name, alt text, and description to be, well, descriptive. To EXPLAIN what the image is about.
Not only is this great for SEO, but it’s also important for your readers who have disabilities. If someone is visually impaired their software reader uses the alt text and description to describe the image to them. Img4202 is not a description. “Chocolate Protein Coconut Cake” is a description.
How can you find not-bad-but-poorly-described images on your site? Rather than browsing post by post or scrolling through your media library, I like to use Pinterest to find the images that are being pinned, but might not be named appropriately. Let me show you how…
First go to your Pinterest Source Page: Mine is http://pinterest.com/source/untrainedhousewife.com but yours will be taking out “untrainedhousewife.com” and adding YourBlogURL.com.
Now I see most of the pins look pretty good but look at this chicken image.
- Example bad description of image or post
This looks like an author bio excerpt so somehow this person’s Pinterest tool pulled the (wrong) image excerpt. This is a problem. I need to check this article and make sure that the image and post excerpt are filled in properly so future Pinterest descriptions are fitting and the image SEO is as strong as it can possibly be! A quick 45 second run through the article fixes the problem for all future shares.
Other chicken pins have the right descriptions but look at the steam inhalation pin. While this image was clearly uploaded with an appropriate title you can tell that no special or unique description was given to the image when it was uploaded. This pin is seasonally relevant right now so I’m going to give it a much stronger and SEO-friendly description.
I edited the post and updated the html for the image title, alt text and description to “Sinus steam inhalations with essential oils can help relieve congestion.” Next I debugged the whole post in Facebook (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/) to make sure my changes will show up there should anyone share to Facebook, and viola! A like-new post that will have stronger SEO than ever.
Note – this will NOT update the pins that are already out there with bad descriptions. This is just a short cut method to help you find those images if it’s likely you’ve only missed a handful of images on your entire blog.
With Untrained Housewife being a collaborative website it means I have a lot of contributors with varying degrees of SEO and tech-savvy knowledge. Sometimes the images slip through the cracks. If you’ve NEVER named your images correctly then you’ll need to go through your site post-by-post to strengthen your SEO and pinning power. Otherwise you are making it harder for your potential readers to find you.
To do this sort your posts either by the amount of page views received or by date published. I would start with the most visited pages first and the most recent pages first, depending on your preference. Open a post and check the image descriptions. In WordPress, hover over the image and click the pencil edit icon.
This brings up your image edit screen, shown below.
Change the image title, alt text and description if needed. Also notice that if your image is linked to the media file you’ll want to change that to url – NONE or to a custom URL (as in the case of an affiliate link). This is also where you can center or left/right align your image or add a caption if needed.
So now it’s your turn to get busy and make your blog as reader-friendly as possible in the new year!
WEEKLY CHALLENGE
Quick Challenge
Redo 10 of your poorly named images.
Advanced Challenge
Redo ALL your poorly named images.
(Did you find mis-labeled or poorly worded photos popping up in Pinterest for you? I showed you mine! Share yours in the Kick Your Blog in the Butt group here. Or let us know what you’re thinking about doing and we can help you!
Who do you know would benefit from this lesson? Sign up as an affiliate here to invite them to join the course using your referral link.
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