fanart SEO
gaming SEO in fanart is actually stupidly easy because no one uses captions on twitter (including myself). so it's really simple to get your artwork to the first page of google's search results for niche characters as long as you just include the character's full name in your post (of course, this does nothing for the traction of your post on twitter itself because no one searches for characters either). for this reason, a lot of reddit and deviantart fanart appear on google, even though they don't represent the most popular artwork of that character at all.
honestly i don't know if there is any point to gaming SEO for fanart like this. it's really weird like, my whole job is just trying to push clients' pages to the top but getting on page 1 for fanart does not feel like an achievement at all even though it's the first thing people see as soon as they get interested in a character. everyone who's ever searched up horace knightley has seen my artwork! ok and so fucking what, he only gets 210 monthly searches in america. you can post on twitter and get more views than that with a couple of RTs.
on another note, images are so dispensable on the internet nowadays it's kinda absurd to me. there are very rarely 'canon' and 'definitive' versions of files when it's so easy to just upload and repost pictures on twitter and tumblr and the like. it's a far cry from using imageshack when i was younger, having to be aware of file limits and basically having a record of every single individual image i ever uploaded onto the net. dreamwidth has like zero budget so i still have to use an external image host to share pictures.
however, the host i use, catbox.moe, automatically randomizes filenames to stuff like sf38js.png and aj2h92.png. while this is a lot less stressful for me because i don't have to think about the longevity of my filenames, it also seems poor for SEO as google's bots will read filenames to determine what the images' content is about.
i don't just say this because i work in SEO though OK!!! this has always been a concern for me and it's part of why i have my own website as an artist. though i have extreme paranoia so i don't optimize my own site lmao i don't want to appear in the search results.
anyway, if you're serious about running your own site or blog you're probably using wordpress or some other CMS that lets you enter filenames manually (or uploading files manually in neocities, github, or an actual host), so there's not much reason to use an external image host at all. but in case you did want an external host that allows you to manually set filenames, squidge.org is specifically designed for fandom-related shit. it's owned by this 50+ year old gay guy who's been participating in fanstuff since the 90s or so lol. only problem is that the front page features IRL dudes naked in a bed together so i avoid visiting it as much as possible.