How to name image files?

[mostakimvip06]

First, in a Facebook group dedicated to creating websites on WordPress, in a thread about preparing graphics for websites and their correct description "for SEO", a question arose about the optimal length of the graphic file name.

A question that may not belong to the group of those on whom the fate of the world depends, but contrary to appearances, it seemed quite interesting to me. Especially since at about the same time I was browsing the website of a photographer friend who had a rather special approach to naming photographs. In his case, the length of the descriptions of each photo oscillated around 140-150 characters (!!!). And there would be nothing wrong with that, if not for the format of the name, which looked something like this:

key-phrase1-key-phrase2-longer-key-phrase 3-one-more-key-phrase-city-and-at-the-end-another-key-phrase-that-no-one-searches-for-photo-size.jpg
Does this photo description format make any sense at all from an SEO perspective? Is it correct? Probably not. Is it worth the trouble of “producing” such long names for image files? Of course not. What does Google say about this? I can say with great probability, bordering on certainty, that Google “doesn’t like” it.

So what should the correct name of a photo look like?
In such cases, you should go straight to the source, which is Google's guide architect title in name for beginners. And Google's recommendations on this matter are that:

you should use “short but descriptive file names”;
the names of files that we place on the website after our corrections should “be short but full of content”;
It is also important that Google strongly discourages and does not recommend “using very long file names.”
The question is, at what point and after how many characters does the file length become "too long"? And what is "short" according to Google ? What is the optimal file name length? The answer to this question is probably the classic "it depends", but in my opinion it's better to say that:

The file name should be as many characters as needed to describe the image.
So it's not the length of characters in the file that we should be interested in, but how the file should be named so that it reflects the content well. Only then will it be indexed well (and high) in the search engine.

The file name is intended to be a short description of its contents and to inform robots what is in the image.

Example:
If the image shows the panorama of Prague, the file should not be named
IMG_4536.jpg
or
outdoor-photography-prague.jpg
only e.g.
panorama-of-prague-from-the-castle-in-hradczany.jpg
or
view-of-prague-from-hradczany-castle.jpg
. The main phrase is “Prague panorama” ("view of Prague") because it is the main subject of the painting.
If the image shows a gray kitten slobbering with milk, the file name would be e.g.

gray-kitty-drinks-milk.jpg.
End.
Of course, you can still stuff some keyword phrase you want there, but don't force it. We also have the ALT attribute at our disposal, where we can place these phrases.


Hyphens, stupid!
Notice that I separated each word in the image file names with a hyphen. A hyphen is another element that we often forget about when naming files. We often use the underscore character instead, which is not the correct solution.