In mid-March, Google rolled out new color-coded filter buttons for Image Search. If you’re a Pinterest user these might look familiar, but if you’re not, here’s what’s new. For certain Google Image searches, on both desktop and mobile, results now include a carousel of thematically colored filtered buttons across the top of the page to help users whittle down their search results.

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But enough about when and where they appear, here’s what this new feature means for you and your SEO efforts:

Image File Names, Alt-Text, & Title Tags Are Still Very Important

In terms of SEO best practices for images, this isn’t anything new. But clearly with the addition of these colored filtered buttons it’s even more crucial to properly label your photos in order for Google to better understand and categorize your images. Want your red Volkswagen Beetle picture to appear in a Google image search for “Volkswagen Beetle” + red? It’s not enough to just call it “vw-beetle.jpg”. You better be incorporating the word “red” into either the file name, alt-text, title tag, or some combination of the three.

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Image Names Should Describe What They Are

Don’t get cutesy or lazy when naming your photos. And this should go without saying, but don’t keyword-stuff either. Just name and label your photos exactly what they are. With these filters, it would seem as though the more descriptive details included the better. For instance, on a travel website, instead of using a title tag like title=”group bike tour” or “family fun” for a photo of a family on a mountain biking tour, try something like this: title=”Family Friendly Mountain Biking Tours near Telluride.”

 

New Filter Categories Can Provide Ideas

From the random Googling I did, it seems as though similar categories appear for searches within the same industry. For instance, searching for a car resulted in filtering options for colors, body styles, and more. Searches for cities on the other hand offered filtering options for things like points of interest, neighborhoods, and seasons. Doing a Google image search for your own type of products may help you to create more relevant file names, alt-text, and title tags for your own images. If applicable or relevant, it makes sense to utilize the words or phrases that fall into one of Google’s predetermined categories.

 

Bonus Benefit: Besides using the filters for help in naming your photos, they might also provide some new inspiration for keywords or content topics. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to assume that Google’s offering up filters based on interest or search volume, so think of it as another tool to complement Google’s autocomplete search feature.

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About the Author

Jamie Paton is a Project Manager at PCG Digital Marketing by day and a TV connoisseur by night. As an SEO strategist she spends a lot of quality time on social media sites and with Google Analytics and Search Console.