Can Embedded Photo Metadata Help Your Website SEO?

There have been a number of recent articles pushing the idea that embedded photo metadata can boost your search engine ranking. However, while the practice of adding embedded metadata to increase findability and to protect the intellectual property of an image are both good ideas, there is a hitch to this concept from the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective.

That is, while it is possible for automated search bots to be configured to read the embedded photo metadata embedded in digital images, there is no evidence to suggest that the search engines are currently doing this; nor is there any evidence that it will help with the SEO for your images or your website — at least not without some additional work. That doesn't mean that embedding metadata in your images is not a good practice. It's just at this point in time that it has little value for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Read more about what can be done to leverage your metadata work in the article "Why Embedded Photo Metadata Won't Help Your SEO."

Myths about photo metadata?

How savvy are you about photo metadata? There are a number of myths or misconceptions that surround the practice of embedding copyright, contact information, and other types of “metadata” into digital image files — like JPEGs, TIFFs, Photoshop, DNG and other Raw files.

Take a look at the list of the Top 12 myths about embedded photo metadata and see if you can tell which are fact and which are fiction.

Here are the top five:

1. Embedded photo metadata is something that is hard to read unless you have Photoshop or some other professional software application.
2. Embedding photo metadata adds a lot of disk space overhead to an image file.
3. Removing embedded photo metadata is against the law.
4. Images that I upload to my social media or photo sharing sites will still retain my embedded photo metadata.
5. Images that I upload to my social media or photo sharing sites will still retain my embedded photo metadata.

Read the other 7 statements in the list as well as all the detailed commentary on the Controlled Vocabulary website.