When image SEO is worth the effort

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. Image SEO is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

When it is worth it

Descriptive filenames and alt text both help. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

How to decide

Image search sends real traffic in visual industries. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

What this looks like day to day

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Three things worth confirming about image SEO before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Compressed images rank better because pages load faster — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.