SEO Image Question

We are currently getting ready to launch a new site and had a question regarding SEO and images.

Many of the photos on our current site show up near the top of the page on a google search under the image tab. The current images would not display correctly on our current site so we have hired a photographer to take all new images for all of our community pages.

Our original thought was to upload the new images to the new site using the same filename and alt image tags as our current images in order to preserve any SEO that these images may be giving the page. I am now wondering if that is the best practice for SEO.

Is it safe to proceed in this manner or will google dislike that we have changed the image but kept the file names and alt image tags the same?

The other thought which is more work is that we upload the new images to the page, give these images new names and new alt image tags. Then upload the current images to different area on the page preserving the current filename and tags.

Which is better for SEO? Does this even matter?

Thank you for your feedback.

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I might be inclined to just leave the old images on the server (with their current file names) and then add the new ones with new filenames. I mean, image traffic is not highly targetted anyways generally, but they are still going to get to your site from image search if they click the old images, no?

Thanks Morgan!

Also remember to optimize your images.

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You won’t get enough traffic from image searches, so focus on the content instead but yes do optimize them.

Compressing images to low resolution could help. Rather do image sharing with sprinkle of content on multiple social channels, this would favor you with enough traffic.
PS target high DA social channels.