Here's What I Learned: Ditching Biz-as-Usual for Values, Freedom, and Doing It Your Way

The Image Title SEO Experiment: A Simple Tweak for Your Website

• Jacki Hayes • Season 10 • Episode 5

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 22:26

Send a text

How much of your SEO is hiding in plain sight... inside your images?

In this episode of Here’s What I Learned, I’m joined by SEO strategist Brittany Herzberg for a real-time experiment: what happens when you stop uploading “IMG4532” and start treating image titles like actual search signals. We get into how Google reads your image file names, what to name them (without turning into a keyword-stuffing goblin), and how to track whether the changes are working using Google Search Console.

If you’re a creative service provider who’s sitting on a backlog of blog graphics, portfolio images, or content assets, this is one of those “small change, big ripple” conversations.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why image titles matter for SEO (and why “IMG_4532” is not helping you)
  • How one quick rename can get you showing up in Google Image results
  • A simple way to decide what to name images
  • Keyword research that does not require a 12-tab spiral
  • A practical guideline for image naming length, plus why hyphens matter
  • When to use location keywords (and why consistency matters)
  • How long to run the experiment and what to track so you actually know if it worked

I’m renaming image titles across my site using Brittany’s approach, then tracking results in Google Search Console for 1 to 2 months. I’ll add my baseline notes and updates after the fact.

 

You can find Brittany at:

 

Mentioned in the episode:

 

What next?

  • Follow Here's What I Learned on your favorite podcast player
  • Leave a review so the podcast is seen by more people like you
  • Share this episode with a friend
  • This podcast is powered by curiosity—and by listeners like you. Support future episodes at ko-fi.com/jackihayes
  • Follow me on Instagram at @jackihayes_obm

 

Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective, a community of indie creators amplifying each other’s work through collaboration and care.

 

Credits:

Intro and Outro Music: Atomic by Alex-Productions |https://onsound.eu/

Music promoted byhttps://www.free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Jacki Hayes

Welcome to season 10 of Here's What I Learned. I'm Jacki Hayes, a systems and ops strategist, romantsy reader, and D&D nerd who's endlessly curious about what makes a business actually work. This season is about experiments.


Big, small, accidental, and transformative. Because every business is built on trial and error, noticing, and iteration. If you're growing a business that changes with you and you're tired of one-size-fits-all advice, you'll feel right at home.


So let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of Here's What I Learned. I am excited to have Brittany Herzberg with me.


She has been my go-to SEO person for ages, whether she knows that or not. I was recently in one of her workshops, and as soon as that workshop series was over, I knew I had to invite her on because I knew that I needed some SEO help. So it seemed perfect to have her on for an experiment.


Welcome to the show, Brittany.


Brittany Herzberg

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for being at the workshop because you made it fun while you were there.


Jacki Hayes

Good. I'm glad. I tried.


So Brittany, we had a lot of back and forth about what I can do because obviously there's a lot of things that we can do when it comes to SEO, but I wanted this to be an easy experiment that the listeners could do on their own and quick to implement. And what we landed on was how we title our images on our websites, which I don't think most people understand that that actually has an impact on their SEO.


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah, totally agree. Most people are very surprised. They're like, I never even thought about that.


And then when you go in, and I think I had a student on the workshop, had us go in and check on our laptops and computers and just see what your images are titled, and people are like, oh my god. IMG4532, yep.


Jacki Hayes

Yep, exactly. That's not going to help with SEO at all. Well, and I know, I think it was on one of your most recent podcast episodes that you talked about, or maybe it was in your newsletter or both, one or the other, where you had a client who just was changing the titles of her images and how she found herself within a short period of time on page one of Google.


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah, yeah. So I've had two pretty incredible stories just in the last few months. And one of them was actually, I think just before the image optimization workshop, because I remember her being there and actually commenting in the chat, she had retitled some of her products.


So she has like caro card decks, for example. She retitled the images that she had of those decks. That started showing up at the top of the Google image results page.


And she actually got a sale from that, like the week after she noticed she was showing up there. And then another person who stages homes that are for sale, I don't even remember exactly her title. It doesn't matter.


But she started retitling her images and she was the one that had, I want to say it was like 20, 25 images that started showing up on page one at the top of those image search results. So it can work and it can work really fast.


Jacki Hayes

Yeah. Well, I think two things with that is one, we all know how important it is to be on page one, because how many of us actually go to page two? And two, you hear that SEO is a long game.


Like it could be months before you see any traction on that. But you're saying you've seen people in a very short period of time have traction.


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah. And I actually started really paying attention to my stats and my clients and their successes in 2025. And what I found really shocked me because the way that I have people approach SEO, they seem to get results wicked fast, sometimes in as little as like two weeks.


And I had a few different people do that. But on average, it's like four to six weeks. Industry standard says about three to six months.


Now, SEO is certainly a long game because it can serve you for months and years to come. But that doesn't mean that it has to take months and years for it to actually go into effect and get those wins for you.


Jacki Hayes

Yeah. I think I heard you say that you have a client who had a blog post from like seven years ago. Yeah.


That just got a sale off of that seven year old blog post.


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah. It was a photographer and she was like, I had nothing SEO if I didn't have blog posts. I don't know what happened, but seven years later, here I am.


They find this and book a session with me. And for anyone who's ever booked a photography session, those are not inexpensive. So they found the blog and booked from that.


It's major. But it also goes to show that what I talk about a lot too is that the intention behind when you're writing a blog post, even if you want to like title images with no keyword research, it can still have the possibility of helping you if you're being thoughtful and intentional with the words that you're choosing.


Jacki Hayes

Now I'm going to go through and I'm going to retitle all of the images on my website, which is handy because I'm also working on compressing the sizes on those for my page speed. So the experiment is going to be a little skewed, folks, because I'm going to have hopefully an improvement on my page speed, but also changing the titles of all of these images. How do I know what to call them?


Brittany Herzberg

No, I want to address what you said though, because I normally do tell people to retitle them and re-upload them after they've resized them. So you're kind of doing all three of the things that I talk about. You just didn't know that you were doing that.


So hats off to you. And then when it comes to what we actually title them, again, you want to be thoughtful about what's the picture, what you want to show up for. So I'm going to have us reel things back a little bit, read it in a little bit.


So when I start with people and you're familiar with this, because again, we've been in each other's worlds for eons at this point. And I always start people off with the three big questions is what I call them. Who do you help?


How do you help them? And what do you want to be known for or get found for? The last one can trip people up a lot, but I want you to think of it like in your dream world, what is someone typing into Google so that you then show up?


And they're like, finally, I found Jacki. Thank goodness. And they go over to your website.


So take some time, think about that. Pause us or scribble that down 15 minutes, 10, 15 minutes or something. And if you find that you meet some resistance with that, one, know that that's totally normal.


So normal in fact that I experienced it. Lots of my done for you clients experience it. And I reported a podcast episode about it.


So I'll make sure that Jacki has that link, but that is one thing that you're going to for sure want to start with. Because when you get those answers, even if it's a hodgepodge, it's like a three page essay, you at least have some words in there that you can start with. So once you have those answers, you're going to take key phrases one at a time, and you're going to plug those into your keyword research tool.


There's a free version of stuff that you can use. There's also just, you could learn to read a Google search results page, or you can go with a paid tool. So for a Google search results page, type something in, hit enter, and just notice what's happening on the page.


Does it make sense? Are you finding other SEO experts? Are you finding other podcast producers?


These are very top of mind for me. Like what are you finding on that search results page? You could also look to the people also ask section to get some other ideas of some other keywords.


You can look before you hit enter, when you type something in the search bar, it'll have this dropdown list of other keywords. One of my clients used that for years before he came to me, and he was able to successfully show up on page one of Google search results. So Google can be a free tool.


Another option would be Ubersuggest. They have a free Chrome extension. You do not need the paid version unless you're going to be like me and jump into SEO, save your money, go with the free extension.


I am a little hesitant to recommend this anymore because the data is not so great, but if you're in a pinch, you could certainly use it. It'll give you an idea of the search volume because that's really why we want to use the tools among other reasons, but keeping it really basic, you want to use it for that. My favorite is paid and it's called Keysearch.


I love it so much that I talk about it all the time. I have an affiliate link. There's a code you can use.


Again, I'll make sure Jacki has it. And why I like it is because it's so intuitive to use. Even if you're on like a shoestring budget, take the discount code, use it, use it for a month and you can bang out a link.


Like me, I need it for more months in a row, but for you and your website, like you could totally use it like this. You're going to do the same thing. Take the phrase, type it into Keysearch and then what you're looking for is search volume.


You're going to look for a search volume of zero to a thousand. It's even more ideal if it's zero to a hundred. People freak out when I say this, so just don't leave me yet.


The reason you don't want to go over a thousand is because if you go over a thousand, you're going to be a small fish in a really big pond. You're going to be hard to find. You're going to end up on page eight.


No one's going to discover you. And that's sad. And we don't want that.


So we want you to be more of a bigger fish in a smaller pond, easier to spot, easier to find, easier to stand out in the crowd, which again is why we're starting with those three questions and really getting specific about who you want to help, how you want to help them and what you want to get found for. So those are the things you're going to look for. Search volume is the big one.


Zero to a thousand, zero to a hundred is even better. The other thing you want to pay attention to is search intent. So that means why is someone typing something like this in?


Are they just wanting information? Are they wanting to understand how and when to use an em dash? Are they wanting to see if the star emoji really is messing up?


Whatever the case may be, they're looking for information. Those people, generally speaking, are not looking to make a purchase. They're not the ones that are typing with one hand and credit card in the other.


Those people are really looking for solutions. They're typing things in like hire a, find a, the best, whatever. They're looking for those types of answers because they have a problem, they have a desire and they're really looking for help and support.


And the help and support they're looking for just varies. So that's something that you're going to want to keep in mind. People also might be looking at some options.


They might be investigating a few different SEO pros, a few different podcast producers, a few different author coaches. They're looking at several different people and doing the vibe check and seeing if they like the option, seeing if it fits their budget, that kind of thing. So these are all things to think about because it's really going to determine what their motivation is and then the action that they're already kind of planning to take by the time they get to your website.


So I'll pause there because I know that's a lot of info already.


Jacki Hayes

Well, I think this comes to a question that I always have about SEO is, and also when you're in the industry, you use terms that people outside the industry don't necessarily use. One of the things for my business that I notice is people will also often come to me because they think they're looking for a solution that a VA or an OVM will provide for them, but I can provide for them. So they may be searching VA and they may be searching OVM, neither one of which I am.


So how do you handle those, what they're actually searching for versus the terminology that you use as a person in the industry for me?


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah. My first thought is blogs. You can go more specific with blogs and you could even have a strategist and an OVM and a VA.


And then you could actually talk about that in the post. People could get that education, the information, and then go check out your services. And maybe someone is like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I was looking for.


And then they go click on something else on your site. You do kind of have to have a variety of terms. Like for me, I can say SEO coach, SEO mentor, SEO expert, SEO strategist.


There's lots of different terms in there. And people are generally searching for SEO something. With your people, it's often, I would imagine something with systems.


So they're looking for system support, backend systems, that kind of thing. Strategy, those might be words that they're using. So if you're ever in doubt, I always recommend, if any, I work with a lot of established entrepreneurs, but I do work with some who are newer.


So if you're ever in doubt and you have a client base already, go ask them. And how do you refer a friend to me? How do you talk about me when you're commenting on Facebook?


You're doing that, right? You can always make it funny, but you'll get some good terminology out of it that way. You'll also get some good terms out of intake forms, onboarding forms, as well as exit surveys or offboarding surveys, that type of thing, feedback forms.


So any of those places, even in client communications, just emails or DMs, you'll often find terms in there. So yeah, that's what I would say about that is you can use a variety, but definitely stick to some of those terms that you're hearing them talk about and use.


Jacki Hayes

And then I know that there is a character limit that you suggest for the titles and meta descriptions. Is there a limit when it comes to titling your images, certain number of words, or just put as many words as you want to? What is your suggestion there?


Brittany Herzberg

I'm laughing because I'm thinking the limit does not exist. However, there's a but here. So the best practice says that you want to stick to about five words.


That can feel pretty limiting, and also, again, something that I was noticing last year with my own practices and habits, I tend to use at least eight to 10 words in an image title. So if it's something like a headshot, I'm definitely going to put Brittany dash Herzberg. We're definitely going to put Jacki dash Hayes and your title or whatever you want to go by or whatever you want to get found for.


So five is what you're going to see thrown around a lot. I still find that it's safe and it's still effective to use eight to 10, but you don't just want to be shoving in random keywords. You want it to be really intentional.


Whatever you're putting in there, and you do want to have dashes, not underscores, not spaces or anything like that. So dashes, hyphens, whatever you want to call them. Depends on what generation you are.


I know.


Jacki Hayes

I think so. We talk to our teenagers and my son who is a gem Z and I say number sign or whatever, and he just looks at me and I'm like pound sign. Okay.


Hashtag. Hashtag. So then one of the things I know if you are, say a photographer and you work in a certain area, it's good to use your location and your SEO.


Is that just good practice for anybody? Even if you work with folks all over the country?


Brittany Herzberg

Yes. Yeah. And I'm seeing it become more, even more of a thing.


I actually have a couple other SEO pro friends who have been talking about this as we're in 2026 and even into the future with AI, because having your location really does make it helpful to go, oh, you're the same Brittany over here on Instagram that you are on the basic podcast that you are on your website. And if someone is searching for something like quote unquote near me, then it helps you to show up. So it gives you a bit of a leg up.


Some people really don't want to put a location on things. You're like, I can help everyone. That's fine.


It's okay. But it's going to help you if you can throw in a location sometimes. And you don't want to change that up.


I used to live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Now I'm in Connecticut. I don't want to say Raleigh and then Connecticut.


Ideally, I would have them all be one place.


Jacki Hayes

Is there anything else we need to know or I need to know before I start this experiment?


Brittany Herzberg

So I know you sent me some keywords before we got on the call. And one of the ones, it was kind of funny because whenever doubt enters the chat, I'm like, let's go to the data. So something that you were curious slash concerned about was operations strategist.


You're like, this is what I am, but no one's probably looking for it. So should I use it? So of course me, I went over to key search.


I looked and it has a search volume of 880. So I keep saying search volume. Let me explain what that is.


Search volume indicates on average each month, how many people are looking for this phrase, how many searches are being done for this phrase. So 880, remember I said zero to a thousand. That's really, really great.


So I'm keeping operations strategist on your list. I also found a few others. So what did I find?


You had business operations, which is a good key. It's a good phrase. And you probably still want to be using that.


However, that had a search volume of 18,000. So we would want to make sure that there's other words in there. We might not want to say just Jacki Hayes business operations.


We're probably going to want to say more like business operations for creatives, for service providers, for creative service providers. Another one that stood out as being a good one was systems strategist. And then I found a couple others.


So the phrase for service providers, for creatives, again, this goes back to the, who do you want to help? Which is great. And both of those had a search volume of 30.


So again, really, really wonderful. I was curious. I saw one that came up that I was like, I don't know if this applies.


Ops manager.


Jacki Hayes

Yeah. Yeah. That would be another one that I could use.


Brittany Herzberg

Okay. So again, that one has a huge search volume. It's 90,000.


So again, just want to make sure that there's probably several other words in that phrase. I wouldn't be so inclined to use that in a headshot photo for you, because again, we're probably just going to have Jacki Hayes ops manager. I would be more inclined for your headshots to say Jacki Hayes operations strategist or something like that.


So yeah, those, those were some that I found. So does that like help you or give you any other insight that you didn't have?


Jacki Hayes

Yeah. And I think it comes back to, I think something we talked about in your workshops was, so I work with creative service providers. That's all kinds of different people, everybody from copywriters to website designers.


So would it be best practice for me for some of my titles to be for website designers and then for copywriters? Does that, would that be something that would be helpful in my SEO?


Brittany Herzberg

I think that could be helpful for something like a blog post or even a podcast episode where you may have, you're definitely going to have thumbnails for those instances, which gives you one image. And then if you, do you tend to put images in your blog posts?


Jacki Hayes

I don't generally right now, but in the future it's good to, if I do start adding them. Yeah.


Brittany Herzberg

So write something to think about. So I would say use that probably more in an instance like that, where you have an image that's titled for copywriters or for website designers, something like that. Yeah.


It wouldn't be bad to have that on your main website pages. I just think it would be more helpful in a blog post where maybe that's part of the SEO strategy already.


Jacki Hayes

Okay. So how long should I run this experiment for? I know we talked that you can see results fairly quickly.


How long do you think we should run this for?


Brittany Herzberg

I would say anywhere from one to two months. That would, that's kind of what I'm leaning toward. Cause I do have some people, like I said, that have like the more four to six weeks where they're seeing things, but I would be very curious.


I almost want to give you enough time to hopefully have someone come in the door and maybe like inquire about services or buy something from you from seeing your image, finding you through your image. I do want to say that Google search console, do you have that set up? Yes, I do have that set up.


So that's going to be one place that you're going to want to monitor. I might be jumping ahead of myself, but I got excited. So on Google search console at the bottom, like if you go to insights, which is a tab on the left, you'll click insights.


You'll scroll all the way to the bottom and it'll say something like additional searches and it'll say images. And there will be a number next to it. If people are clicking to your website by finding an image.


So that's one thing you're going to want to start paying attention to. And I would say you don't have to get obsessive about it. Maybe check it like once a month and look at the prior month.


Jacki Hayes

And folks, I will be posting in the show notes, my beginning data, what I'm seeing. And then when we complete the experiment, I will be adding what I'm seeing after the fact. And it's good.


I know to look at that Google search console, because one of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of my traffic is actually for empathetic copywriting. And that was from a podcast interview I did with somebody else. And I'm like, Oh, people are coming to me for copywriting things.


That's good to know.


Brittany Herzberg

Right. It is. And I still have a lot of my background is as a massage therapist.


And I still have a lot of things that I was ranking for in last year. I was like, we got to change this. We have to crank out.


The thing to do is crank out more content or assets. So image titles will be a really great thing to help you.


Jacki Hayes

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, folks, this will be going out after her workshop that she's going to be doing in January, where I intend to get a lot of content ideas for the rest of the year.


Brittany Herzberg

I think I'll have some version of that evergreen. So I'll make sure you have the link for that. Yeah, exactly.


Jacki Hayes

Folks, there's gonna be a lot of links. A lot.


Brittany Herzberg

I'm a link happy human. Yeah, I can't help it.


Jacki Hayes

Same, same. So Brittany, where can everybody find you to learn more?


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah. So always my website, brittanyhersberg.com. Don't try to spell it.


I'll make sure Jacki has the link. And then my podcast is The Basic Me. I talk about all things SEO for entrepreneurs over there.


I'm switching a lot to solo episodes this year. So if you've listened to me in the past, I had a lot of guests, but I've got a lot of solos coming up. I'm constantly hanging out on Instagram and the DMs. I pretty much always have stories going. Posts are sporadic right now. And then threads. Threads is another fun place that I hang out.


Jacki Hayes

Threads is where everybody's at, everybody.


Brittany Herzberg

Yeah, it is. Join us.


Jacki Hayes

Brittany, I will have you back on. What we'll do, folks, is I'll be checking in with Brittany at the end of a month and let her know where things are at and what kind of gauge when we will have her back on and how long the experiment will actually run. But you can definitely come back for the second episode so you can learn about the results that I had and what I'm going to be doing next.


Love it. Brittany, I can't wait to see what happens.


Brittany Herzberg

Neither can I. I'm so excited. Thank you for inviting me on and for sharing this with everyone.


Jacki Hayes

Thanks, Brittany. Bye. Thanks again for spending time with me on Here's What I Learned.


If this episode gave you something useful to try, rethink, or explore, the best way to support the show is to follow and lead a review. That helps more curious business owners find their way here. And if you want more real talk about the experiments that shape our businesses, plus practical doable system ideas, join my email list.


I send one to two emails each week with stories, insights, and strategies that help you build a business that supports your life, not the other way around. You'll also get updates on workshops, new offerings, and the things I'm learning as I experiment alongside you. Until next time, keep experimenting, keep paying attention to what those experiments tell you, and keep building a business that fits you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.