Images uploaded via NextGEN Gallery are 100% visible to search engines unless you tell your site to prevent that otherwise.
Search engines looks for a few things when indexing images. They look for:
- Filename of the image: so DSC2345.jpg is not as friendly to search engines as blue-ridge-mountains.jpg
- ALT tag: The ALT/Title field in NextGEN Gallery should contain your keyword so "Paul & John's Wedding" is not as search engine friendly as "Blue Ridge Mountain Wedding"
If you implement those to items then your images will be indexed. But that does not mean they will rank. To rank images well you need to make the page content (where the images sit) also optimized for the keyword of choice. So if the images are related to the Blue Ridge Mountains then the page content should also be related to it.
At the time that I'm writing this NextGEN Gallery does not integrate with All in One SEO. However, we do offer integration with Yoast SEO (formally, WordPress SEO by Yoast).
Be sure not to block images from search engines, if you want them to be indexed and potentially rank. If you utilize noindex on a page with images or block images using your robots.txt file then you are unlikely to see your image show up in search results.
Here is an article with some general image SEO advice. Or review our free resource here.
I hope that helps, thanks for reading.
Scott
Adam
23 Apr 2019Is there a reason why you merge the Title and Alt tag together, there would be a benefit for us to have unique titles and alt tags – particularly when optimising images for both search engines and Pinterest.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
23 Apr 2019When we acquired the plugin a few years ago it was already like that. There just hasn’t been enough requests from users to separate them. If the requests poured in, we’d definitely address that.
Scott
23 Jan 2020Yes, please address it; they can serve two different purposes. Also, Pro Mosaic doesn’t even seem to use image alt tags.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
24 Jan 2020Pro Mosaic does in fact have ALT tags. You can see that in action by viewing our Pro Mosaic demo and browsing the source code of the page.
Michelle
24 Mar 2020Have you had a chance to integrate it with All in One SEO, I find it to be a super useful tool but somehow I can not find an easy way of not indexing the tags?
I added */nng_tag/* to the robot.txt (disabled) file and as soon as I save it, it gives me this /*/nng_tag/*
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
24 Mar 2020Sorry, no. At this point in time, our recommendation would be to use Yoast SEO.
Simona
27 Jul 2020Is it possible to prevent the images in nextgen galleries from appearing in the search engines? We would like the images in the galleries to be accessible by members only.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
27 Jul 2020If you insert a gallery on a page or post that’s password-protected, or behind a member wall, and prevent that page from indexing in Yoast SEO, then search engines shouldn’t see the images.