Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

yes yes yes! Think long tail keyword phrases. You should absolutely have it in the ALT text and in the image name. I'm going to preface any other answers with this: none of us know Google's algorithms. You never know how search engines will change. It sucks to implement thinking "that doesn't matter" only to find out 6 months down the road that it does. In my opinion an SEO best practice is to "always be optimizing" - as your image collection grows it'll be easier to locate precise images. If importance on filenames becomes more important - you'll be ahead of the curve and not going back through your site. As more people go "mobile" I would not be surprised if Google weighted heavier on filenames. But if for no other reason do it for your own content management/document management.

Yes! Here are my tips for Image SEO:

Name the image file with the keyword as the filename. For multiple keyword phrases, separate terms with a dash (-) or an underscore (_). Example:

Ensure that the alt text of the image tag contains the target keyword. Also consider incorporating a title tag on the image tag.Example:

Incorporate the keyword into the page content where the image resides.

If the image has an enlargement version, ensure that the link to the enlarged version contains the keyword in the anchor text.

Ensure that the surrounding text on the page uses the keyword for that image.

Append your keyword with the word “picture” or “pictures”.

There are two benefits. Optimizing a page and optimizing for image search. Optimizing for a page may not provide much SEO value though SEO is a battle of inches so in combination with other tactics it can help.

Regardless of your objective, the alt attribute and other descriptive elements should describe the image.

Otherwise, yes, the filename and the alt text, title, caption and text near the image, is helpful from a SEO perspective. Avoid having myriad images on a given page that are optimized similarly and avoid stuffing the attribute with keywords and SEO gibberish. Avoid repeating the title tag.

Opt into Google Webmaster tools image search. However, there is valid concern that the quality of image-driven visits may be low thereby affecting your global bounce-rate, potentially damaging your rankings. However, we have one client that receives ~40% of their traffic from image searches and the visitors convert at a reasonable rate. It works for them. Your results may differ.

There is also debate (a good page on this ishttps://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-internal-interlinking-relative-vs-a...) in regards to absolute vs relative URI.