Sauce · Fundamentals
Your job photos could be pulling customers. Right now they pull nothing.
Quick answer
You have hundreds of real job photos. Google Images may not know one exists. Getting a photo found has little to do with how good it looks. It comes down to four small things: a real image tag, not a background trick. A plain filename. Honest alt text. A sitemap that lists it. None of it means stamping GPS data into the file. Google strips that on upload, and it never helped rankings.
Is your trade still open in your city?We take one client per trade, per city. The call starts with that check, not a pitch.
Book a free assessmentYou uploaded 400 job photos this year. Google Images can probably find twelve of them.
Not because the photos are bad. Because of how they got onto the page. A gallery plugin, a page builder, a "modern" theme, any of these can hide a photo well. The picture loads fine. To Google, it does not exist at all.
Why Google can't see photos your customers see just fine
A browser doesn't care how an image gets onto a page. Google does. Three things break it. A photo set as a CSS background. A photo dropped in with code that never gives it a real address. Or a photo hidden behind a "load more" click no crawler will ever press. All three look fine to a visitor. All three can be invisible to Google.
- A sharp photo of the finished roof, loaded instantly, sitting right in the gallery.
- A caption underneath it, maybe a date, maybe not.
- Nothing about it feels broken. The page looks finished.
- A
<div>with a background image set in CSS. Google does not index CSS backgrounds. - No filename worth reading:
img4821.jpg, generated by a phone or a plugin. - No alt text, so there is nothing but a blank space to tell Google what the photo is of.
The four-part checklist
Getting found in Google Images is not a design problem. It is four small, exact things, done every time.
A real image element
The photo has to load through a real image tag. Not a CSS background. Not a script with no direct address. If your site runs on a normal platform (Squarespace, Wix, a standard WordPress theme) this is usually already fine. Custom-built galleries are where it breaks.
A plain, clear filename
Short, plain, and about the photo. torn-shingle-repair.jpg beats IMG_4821.JPG every time. Google reads the filename as a small clue before it ever looks at the pixels.
Honest alt text
One plain sentence describing what is in the photo. Not a keyword list. Not empty. Not "image." Alt text also gets read aloud by a screen reader for a blind visitor, so it has a job beyond search too.
A sitemap that lists it
An image sitemap tells Google about photos it might miss on its own. Mainly ones loaded in by code rather than a plain link. Most page builders can turn this on. Most owners never check that it's on.
Want the technical basics checked for you?The free 49-point audit looks at image and crawl basics alongside your Map Pack visibility.
Get the free scanFilename and alt text, worse to best
Same photo. Three ways to label it.
Same roof photo, three ways
- Filename:
IMG_4821.JPG - Alt text: none
- Google's honest read: an unnamed image with no description. It could be anything, so it is treated as almost nothing.
- Filename:
roof.jpg - Alt text: "roof"
- Google's honest read: a photo of a roof, somewhere. True, but so thin it barely helps.
- Filename:
torn-shingle-repair-two-story-home.jpg - Alt text: "A torn section of asphalt shingle replaced on a two-story home's roof."
- Google's honest read: a specific job, a specific problem, described in plain language. This is what a caption and a filename are supposed to do.
Nothing here requires a keyword stuffed into every filename. It requires the same plain sentence a person would use to describe the photo out loud.
The one thing that still doesn't matter
Somewhere, a vendor is charging a local business to "geotag" its photos: hiding GPS coordinates inside the file before it goes up. Google strips that location data the moment the photo is uploaded. It never carried the ranking weight it was sold on. What the photo shows matters. The hidden coordinates inside the file do not. If a proposal leads with geotagging as a selling point, ask about that directly.
The other lever nobody checks: does your sitemap even list your images?
A sitemap's normal job is telling Google which pages exist. An image sitemap does the same thing for photos. It exists for one reason: some images, mainly ones loaded in by code, never turn up to a crawler any other way. You can add image tags to your current sitemap, or publish a separate one. Google treats either as fine. What matters is that it lists them at all, which most owners have never once checked.
The five-minute check
<image:image> tags next to your page URLs, your images are already being submitted. If there is nothing, they are not.background-image, and never inside a real <img> tag, it will not count as an image. Not to Google. No matter how sharp it looks on the page.Go deeper
The rest of the fundamentals
Each one covers a piece of the same house-keeping. Pick what you need.
Google Business Profile photos, done right
The exact photo rules for your Google listing, not your website.
Read it › Piece 02The sitemap file most sites get wrong
The five-minute check for whether Google can even find your pages.
Read it › Piece 03Turn a job photo into dated map proof
A structured, correctly-labeled way to log a finished job from your phone.
Read it ›You already have the photos. Most businesses do. The gap is almost never the work, it is four small labels nobody ever checked.
Do I need to rename every photo on my website?
Only going forward is realistic for most businesses. Rename new uploads as you add them, using a short, plain description of what is in the photo. Going back and renaming hundreds of old files is rarely worth the time next to fixing the pattern for everything new.
Does alt text actually help me rank, or is it just for accessibility?
Both. Google reads alt text along with the rest of the page to work out what an image shows. The same text is also read aloud by screen readers, for visitors who cannot see the photo. One honest sentence does both jobs at once.
My gallery plugin doesn't let me control filenames. What now?
Check whether it lets you set alt text on its own. That often matters more than the filename, and it is usually editable even when the file itself is not. If neither one is possible, weigh that limit against the traffic you may be losing.
Does putting my city name in every photo filename help?
Only if it is true and natural, like roof-repair-langley.jpg for a job actually done in Langley. Stuffing a city name into every file no matter where the job happened is keyword stuffing, and Google's own rules warn against it directly.
Do I need a separate image sitemap, or does my regular sitemap cover it?
Either works. You can add image tags to your existing page sitemap or publish a standalone image sitemap; Google treats both as equally valid. What matters is that one of them actually lists your images, which is worth checking directly rather than assuming.
Sources
- Google Search Central, “Google Image SEO best practices”: real
<img>elements (not CSS backgrounds), descriptive filenames, honest non-stuffed alt text, and image sitemaps as the core discovery and indexing requirements. - Google Search Central, “Image sitemaps”: image sitemaps exist specifically for images Google might not otherwise find, including ones loaded by JavaScript.
- Google Business Profile Help, Improve your local ranking on Google: image relevance and quality are part of the broader signal set; there is no way to pay or trick your way to a better local rank.
- Photo GPS metadata is stripped by Google on upload, and controlled testing has found no ranking benefit from geotagging, consistent with the same finding already cited across this site's guides. DHM INTERPRETATION
Next step
Find out whether your trade is still open in your city
One client per trade, per city. The call starts with that check, not a pitch.