What's the product image SEO checklist that actually moves traffic?

What's the product image SEO checklist that actually moves traffic?

'Q: I have great product photos but get zero image search traffic. What am I missing?'

Short answer: Descriptive filenames, real alt text, and crawlable image URLs in an image sitemap — most stores miss all three.

The longer version: Tick these off.
— Filenames: blue-leather-ankle-boot.jpg, not IMG_4821.jpg.
— Alt text describing the product as a shopper would ('women's blue leather ankle boot'), not keyword soup.
— Make sure images aren't hidden behind lazy-load that never fires for bots; provide a real src or use native loading.
— Serve next-gen formats (WebP/AVIF) and correct dimensions so the page passes Core Web Vitals — slow image pages get suppressed.
— Add images to an image sitemap so Google can discover them.

Example: a furniture store renamed files and added alt text on 2k products and started pulling Google Images traffic that converted, since shoppers search visually.

Rule of thumb: if a bot can't read the filename, alt, and URL, the photo doesn't exist for search.

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