You almost want to get angry with Google for how often they make changes to that search algorithm. But in reality, we know it is just them having all of our backs.

So here’s a recent change: Google updated its image SEO best practices, and now inconsistent URLs for images on your site will be eating up your crawl budget.

Here’s specifically how this goes down – according to Google: “If an image is referenced on multiple pages within a larger website, consider the site’s overall crawl budget. In particular, consistently reference the image with the same URL, so that Google can cache and reuse the image without needing to request it multiple times.”

So for you SEO experts out there, just remember that image optimisation doesn’t end at alt text. Check how your images are currently linked across your website and make sure you are using a standard structure for all image URLs.