Asset Naming. Alt Text. Better Rankings

May 6, 2026 Build service icon (blue) Build Grow service icon (blue) Grow
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Most people think Google only reads the text on your page. They upload a file like IMG_9942.jpg and assume the job is done. They are wrong.

 

What Are We Actually Talking About?

Asset naming is simply what you call your file; it is the name on your hard drive before you hit upload. Alt text stands for alternative text, which functions as an invisible description attached to your image. It helps describe the picture to users who are unable to see it.

 

Why You Need to Care

Search engines are smart, and AI can already computationally determine what is included in your images. However, making your site’s structure as obvious as possible to crawlers actively helps your SEO.

Think of it like building a flat-pack piece of furniture. You put it together, have a screw or two left over, and it looks fine. But take a few more away, and the structure starts to degrade. Website ranking works exactly the same way. Because there are hundreds of signals that affect your rank, you must treat every minor detail as if it is really important. Cumulatively, they make a big impact.

 

The Page Ten Obscurity Reality Check

Individually, you might think ignoring this does nothing, but ignore it entirely, and you lose traffic. Imagine writing an incredible guide to fixing a sink. You upload five photos named screenshot1.png to screenshot5.png and leave the alt text blank.

 

The Non-Negotiable Rules

  • Be highly descriptive. Name your files exactly what they show. Change DSC_001.jpg to blue-suede-shoes.jpg.
  • Always add alt text, with one exception. Describe every meaningful image. Leave it empty (alt=””) for purely decorative ones so screen readers skip them. Either way the alt attribute stays in, you just never omit it.
  • Automate the fallback. We know clients often don’t change these things at all. That is why we are in the process of creating a plugin to assess images, rename files, and add alt text for you.
  • Prioritise human review. A human setting is always preferred. Humans should actually look at the file names and alt text. But an AI method is considerably better than no method at all.

Use lowercase words separated by hyphens, with no spaces or underscores, so blue-suede-shoes.jpg rather than Blue_Suede_Shoes.jpg or DSC_001.jpg. Google reads hyphens as word breaks but treats underscores as joiners, so “blue_suede_shoes” can register as a single word. Describe what the image actually shows in two to four words and skip filler like “image-of” or meaningless numbers.

Keep it to one concise sentence, ideally under about 125 characters. Many screen readers stop reading around that point, so anything longer gets cut off for the people who depend on it most. Describe the content and its purpose plainly, and don’t open with “image of” or “picture of” because the screen reader already announces that it is an image.

Real human oversight is always best. It is much preferred that humans actually look at the files and write the text.

Leave the alt attribute empty (alt=””) for images that are purely decorative, such as background textures, dividers or spacers. An empty alt tells screen readers to skip the image rather than read out a distracting description. This is the one case where blanket “always write alt text” advice is wrong: a blank alt is correct, but a missing alt attribute is not, so you still include alt=””.

It can, because renaming a file that is already live changes its URL, which breaks existing links to it and can drop the image out of Google Images until it is re-crawled. The safe approach is to set good names before you upload. If you must rename images that are already published, add 301 redirects from the old image URLs and update everywhere the image is embedded.

They are minor signals rather than major ranking factors. Google uses the file name, alt text and surrounding copy mainly to understand an image and place it in Google Images, where alt text carries more weight than the file name. The direct effect on your page rankings is small, but the accessibility benefit is real and the signals accumulate, which is why they are worth getting right.