Your Website Photos Are Invisible to Google — Here's How to Fix That

Imagine you opened a beautiful shop, filled the window with incredible products, and then painted the glass black. People walking by can't see a thing. That's essentially what's happening to most businesses with their website photos right now.

You've paid for professional photography, or spent hours finding the perfect images. They look great. But to Google? They might as well not exist.

Here's why — and how to fix it without hiring anyone or learning to code.

Google Is Blind. Seriously.

When Google visits your website, it reads text. That's how it understands what your page is about and decides whether to show it to someone searching online.

But photos? Google can't actually see them the way you do. It can't look at a picture of your restaurant's pasta dish and think "ah, handmade tagliatelle in Oslo." It needs you to tell it what's in the photo using words.

Think of Google as a very smart assistant who works entirely in the dark. You need to hand them a written description of every photo, or they'll just shrug and move on.

Alt Text: The Caption Google Actually Reads

Every image on a website can have something called alt text — a short written description that lives behind the scenes, invisible to visitors but very visible to Google.

Most businesses either leave this completely blank, or let their website platform fill it in automatically with something useless like IMG_4872.jpg. That tells Google absolutely nothing.

Good alt text is just a plain, honest description of what's in the photo. If you're a florist in Manchester and you have a photo of a bridal bouquet with white roses, your alt text should say something like: "White rose bridal bouquet arranged by a florist in Manchester."

That's it. No tricks. Just describe the photo like you'd describe it to someone on the phone.

A local bakery in Oslo did exactly this — went through their 40 product photos and wrote real descriptions for each one. Within three months, they started showing up in Google Image search for terms like "sourdough bread Oslo" and "custom birthday cake Oslo." New customers were clicking through directly from image results. Free traffic, zero ad spend.

File Names: Don't Let Google Find "Photo123.png"

Here's another easy win most people miss. When you save a photo and upload it to your website, the file name matters more than you'd think.

If you take a photo on your phone and upload it as DSC_00472.jpg, Google sees that name and learns nothing. But if you rename it handmade-leather-wallet-brown.jpg before uploading, suddenly Google has useful context.

It's like labelling boxes when you move house. A box labelled "kitchen — coffee mugs" is infinitely more useful than one labelled "box 14." Same stuff inside, completely different experience finding it later.

Rename your images before you upload them. Use simple words separated by hyphens. No spaces, no capital letters, no random numbers. Describe what's actually in the photo.

Compression: The Problem Nobody Talks About

This one doesn't affect whether Google understands your images — it affects whether Google likes your website enough to show it to people.

Here's the thing: big, heavy image files make your website load slowly. And slow websites get pushed down in Google search results. A photo straight from a professional camera can easily be 8 or 10 megabytes. That's enormous. A well-compressed version of the same photo might be 200 kilobytes — around 50 times smaller — and look practically identical on screen.

Think of it like a delivery truck. If your truck is overloaded, it crawls down the road and your customers are waiting. A properly loaded truck gets there fast, and everyone's happy.

Free tools like Squoosh let you compress images in your browser in about 30 seconds. You drag your photo in, reduce the size, and download a leaner version. Done.

Why This All Adds Up

Each of these things — alt text, file names, compression — feels small on its own. But together, they send Google a clear message: this website is well-organised, fast, and relevant to real searches.

And here's the real kicker. Google Image search is its own traffic source. When someone types "oak dining table London" or "bridal makeup artist Dublin" into Google and switches to the Images tab, your photos can show up — but only if you've told Google what's in them.

Most of your competitors haven't done this. Their beautiful photos are sitting there in the dark, completely ignored. This is a rare situation where doing a bit of basic housekeeping puts you genuinely ahead.

Where to Start This Week

Go to your website and pick your five most important photos — the ones on your homepage or the images of your best products or services. For each one, ask yourself:

• Does this image have a description written in plain English? (Alt text)
• Is the file name something meaningful, not a camera code? (File name)
• Does your website load quickly, or does it take more than 3 seconds? (Compression)

If the answer to any of those is "I have no idea," that's completely normal — and it means there's real, free traffic sitting on the table waiting for you.

If you'd like a second opinion on your project, I'm easy to reach — get in touch here.