Images and SEO

Images make your website attractive, but Google can’t “look”. It reads the file name and the alt text. On top of that, heavy images make your website slow, and a slow website ranks lower.

File names

Give the file a clear name before you upload it.

• Describe what’s in the image, including the topic of the page.
• Lower case, with words separated by hyphens (-).
• No spaces, accents or special characters (é, ë, &, %, ?, …).
• Short and clear: three to six words is enough.

❌ Not so good	✅ Better
IMG_4032.jpg	bathroom-walk-in-shower-ghent.jpg
DSC00012 (2) copy.JPG	team-janssens-builders.jpg
Photo website final v3.jpg	kitchen-showroom-merelbeke.jpg
logo.png	logo-janssens-builders.png

Tip

The CMS automatically turns a file name into a safe name (without spaces or accents). But IMG_4032 stays img-4032: the meaning has to come from you.

Alt text

Alt text (alternative text) describes what an image shows. It matters for:

• Google, which then knows what the image shows and can display it in Google Images;
• blind and partially sighted visitors, whose screen reader reads the alt text aloud;
• everyone, when an image doesn’t load.

You fill in the alt text on the image’s detail page, or in the block where the image is used.

How to write good alt text

• Describe what can be seen, in one short sentence (up to about 125 characters).
• Be specific: “Walk-in shower with grey tiles and a black tap” says more than “bathroom”.
• Don’t start with “Image of” or “Photo of”. A screen reader already says it’s an image.
• Only use a keyword if it fits. A list of keywords is not a description.
• Is there text in the image? Include that text in the alt text.

❌ Not so good	✅ Better
(empty)	Walk-in shower with grey tiles and a black rain shower
photo	Our team of five in front of the showroom in Merelbeke
bathroom bathroom renovation ghent bathroom	Renovated bathroom with double washbasin and wooden cabinet

Note

Purely decorative images, such as a background pattern, don’t need a description.

Size and weight

• 2000 × 2000 pixels and 2 MB at most per image. Preferably much less: most photos can go below 500 kB without any visible loss of quality.
• JPG or WebP for photos, PNG for images with transparency.
• Shrink photos from your phone or camera first, for example with squoosh.app.
• Choose a focus point if your website allows it, so the most important part stays visible on a smartphone.

PDFs

PDFs show up in Google too. Give them a clear file name (price-list-2026.pdf) and keep them light. Important information is best also put as text on the page itself: that’s easier to read on a smartphone than a PDF.

Multilingual website

• The file name is the same for all languages. Use your website’s default language, or a name that works in every language, such as the name of a product or place.
• Alt text is filled in per language. Choose the language at the top, open the image and fill in the alt text in that language. Otherwise a screen reader will read a Dutch description on your French page.
• Images with text on them? That text can’t be translated. So avoid such images, or make a separate version per language, for example summer-offer-flyer-nl.jpg and summer-offer-flyer-fr.jpg.
• PDFs in several languages: upload one file per language, with the language in the name (prijslijst-2026-nl.pdf, liste-de-prix-2026-fr.pdf), and link to the right file in each language.