Problem with SEO for my Image based website.

[thedevilseeker]

My website focuses on movie posters. I'm having a little debate on what is the best way to have images linked to.

The current image location is stored like this:

/movie-name/poster-1.jpg
/movie-name/poster-2.jpg

Is it best to leave it like that or change it to :

/movie-name/movie-name-poster-1.jpg
/movie-name/movie-name-poster-1.jpg

The reason I ask, is that I read today that Google uses the image name to help detect what the image is about.

At the same time, if the movie name is the in folder structure, along with the image name... wouldn't it start to look like keyword stuffing?

[AlanMosley]

As donna said they look at the whole url, but I would prefere the fiile name to be descriptive, I would do something like /horror/frankenstein.png

[GrowthHackingGooglesIndex]

First.  Take into consideration what you will loose by renaming urls/images.  Then look at estimates for potential gain.

Try something like

/movie-name/actor-in-poster.jpg

/movie-name/modifier.jpg (Meaning if the move is Judge Dread Original this modifer would be original-move or the date of the movie release/decade etc)

Getting into meta properties of the image is not a bad idea either.  Right click it and look at the properties then get creative not spammy.

[DonnaDuncan]

Yes, it will look like stuffing.

Google looks at the entire URL. You're best to go with the first option, using short but descriptive language to name your poster files.

That said, if you're renaming files you need to keep in mind any existing links or bookmarks. You don't want to create a poor user experience or lose any existing link equity.