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After reading Matt's article on SEO-compatible file-naming conventions, I realized that I badly needed to do a mass-renaming of my images. (No, I didn't have anything named IMG_0001.jpg, but I did have a system that used only the date and sequence number, meaning no alphanumeric characters to start off, and no keywords at all...not good!)
So, a renaming project is called for. I'm trying to find a balance between making names as useful as possible and the most-efficient solution for renaming somewhere north of 20,000 photographs. My immediate questions:
1) The recommendation in Matt's article is Photographer-identifier_date_keywords_sequence-number. Would there be much difference in usability between that and Photographer-identifier_date_sequence-number_keywords? I ask because it would be much easier to do a batch rename concatenating an identifier with the existing filename, then appending appropriate custom text to the end of that, than having to erase the current sequence numbers and replace each with a keyword-sequence combination of custom text. Also, I sometimes have a number of different subjects over the course of a day, and really don't want to have, in such cases, a whole bunch of keyword combinations, each with a sequence starting all over again with 0001. I get headaches even thinking of trying to keep such a scheme organized.
2) More importantly, how many keywords do you usually use on an image? Matt's first example shows a pattern of country_city plus a few words giving a more-specific location. The thing is, if I wanted to be scrupulous, I could wind up with a filename that would practically include every keyword in my image. For example, if I were to include some shots of wildflower fields in Mount Rainier National Park, I could easily imagine something crazy like "United_States_Washington_Mount_Rainier_National_Park_Paradise_Wildflowers"...and even more if I had a specific type or types of wildflower featured, or some other important quality of the image. Obviously, that could easily result in unbelievably-long filenames -- but, if I were to cut it down to something more manageable, I would think a lot of usefulness for SEO would vanish.
3) When it comes to the photographer-identifier, has anyone found that, say, using their full last name was more useful than simply their initials, or is it pretty much a wash, as long as you start with something distinctive and alphanumeric?
Understand, I'm not asking anyone to give me "The Answer" on how to do this, but I'd just like to hear from some of you what your experiences have been in this regard, and what you find has worked well for you. Thanks!
Last edited by Raven Falls (2014-04-04 17:14:31)
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1.
The problem with putting sequence number first is that your images would no longer sort by keyword. Let's say I'm here in Seoul, hanging out with Lucy. We take some photos; some photos are of Lucy, and some photos are just of Seoul.
Sorting by capture time, I'd get this:
mc-20140404-Korea-Seoul-0001
mc-20140404-Korea-Lucy-0002
mc-20140404-Korea-Seoul-0003
mc-20140404-Korea-Lucy-0004
Sorting by file name, I'd get this:
mc-20140404-Korea-Lucy-0002
mc-20140404-Korea-Lucy-0004
mc-20140404-Korea-Seoul-0001
mc-20140404-Korea-Seoul-0003
So now my photos of Lucy are all together, which is convenient if I need to gather of the images to send to Lucy.
If I put my sequence number ahead of my keyword, then my images always sort this way (by capture time, by file name, etc.)
mc-20140404-0001-Korea-Seoul
mc-20140404-0002-Korea-Lucy
mc-20140404-0003-Korea-Seoul
mc-20140404-0004-Korea-Lucy
2.
I would limit myself to two-to-three strong keywords. Depending on the day you ask and whom you're asking, overly long file names may actually hurt your SEO. I think Google stops looking at filenames beyond a certain length, and it will also punish you if it determines you're just trying to spam it with keywords.
3.
If you want to weight SEO toward your name rather than your keywords, then using your name is not a bad idea. For me, it's just for my own convenience in knowing which images are mine, which are someone else's, and to keep letters at the front of the file name.
You might also read my recent workflow article, which also discusses using file names:
http://theturninggate.net/2014/03/proce … the-stars/
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Thanks for the link.
As to point 1, I'm really not particularly concerned about using the placement of keywords in titles for sorting purposes, as I can simply use a LR keyword search for the same purpose. My main concern in including keywords at all would be for SEO. (If it wasn't for such matters, I wouldn't put any keywords in the title at all.)
I am still curious to hear what other users' experiences have been as well. From a look at various well-known photographers' websites, it would appear that they generally name files on their website either by the (oftimes fanciful) titles they've given them, or by some completely apparently randomly-generated series of letters and numbers, with no guarantee that the first character will be a letter; neither of which "solution" seems to make any sense at all from an SEO standpoint, or any other form of organization, for that matter.
Last edited by Raven Falls (2014-04-05 00:16:08)
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I don't think either of those "solutions" are actually intentional solutions. Generally speaking, these people don't know they have a problem in the first place. We aim to educate in this reach, but our reach is small.
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I'm sure they aren't.
One key question (pun not intended): how much weight do search engines give to keywords in filenames as opposed, say, to captions that are displayed within CE3. If, as you say, it is best to restrict oneself to two or three in the filename at most, it would appear that I could be a lot more descriptive and complete with a well-thought-out caption. Are filenames much more heavily weighted in terms of SEO, where it would be wiser to spend more time figuring how best to include keywords there, or should more time be spent figuring out a really good, detailed caption (which I'm going to need to do in most cases anyway)?
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No idea. Search engines are generally rather vague out how things are weighed, and they change their algorithms constantly, so today's answer may not be tomorrow's answer.
You may find this enlightening:
http://static.googleusercontent.com/med … -guide.pdf
Or this:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … mages.html
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By the way, for those like myself who already have a naming convention (mine was YYYYMMDD_SequenceNumber), and who are leery of switching to a new one for fear of screwing something up while renaming several thousand files and having to correct such a mistake "by hand" on thousands of files, I would strongly recommend the "Search + Replace" plug-in available here: http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/pr … sec=search. Although it is designed to work on metadata rather than filenames, the author gives a workaround for how you can use it for renaming purposes: http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/complex-fi … d-replace/.
In my case, as a backup, I first transferred the original filenames (minus suffixes) to one of the custom data fields (renamed "Filename"), copied that into two additional such fields ("Date" and "Sequence"), then used the search & replace function of the plug-in to trim out the extra data from each of those two, so that the first now holds the YYYYMMDD date and the second the four-digit sequence number for each photo. That way, I can recreate the my original naming convention should something go horribly wrong, and also combine the fields in different ways for a new batch rename job any time I want. (For example, I'm considering devoting another custom field to "Keywords" -- the two or three you recommend -- so that creating a filename for each image according to the advisable scheme will be a simple matter of concatenating the fields together in an IPTC metadata field, and then doing a batch rename from there.) Quick, customizable, and easily reversible...not a bad combination for someone paranoid about screwing up a large LR catalog!
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For another file renaming resource, I've use Rob Cole's RC File Renamer LR plug-in with good success when needing to do some search and replace file renaming
http://www.robcole.com/Rob/ProductsAndS … rLrPlugin/
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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