Image optimization for e-commerce
-
Regarding image optimization for an ecommerce site.
In your "category" pages you list your products with a small thumbnails / miniature image. When the user clicks on the product name or on the thumnails, he lands on the product page with the real size product image.How do you optimize the thumbnail image?
- Do you use a different ALT?
- Is Google smart enough to index the real size image?
On one hand the image located on the "product" page has lot more content around, is bigger & more interesting for both the user and Google. On the other hand the "category" page has more autority ( links) than the product page...
To reformulate my questions:
- Do you think ALT tag is important for your thumbnail image on your category pages.
- Do you write different ALT tag for your thumbnail image ( on your category pages) & and your real size image (on your product page)?
- Which ALT tag / image do you think is the most interesting for Google?
What do you think?
Cheers,
Ludo
-
If what you are asking is how to optimize the image so it does well in google image search, then best way is to put a caption under the image you want to appear in the image search Google pays attention to about the next 70 characters following the image on the html/php page.
so if you want to rank well for brown bowling shoes in image search
simply put brown bowling shoes on the html/php page right after the image, also use brown bowling shoes it the alt attribute of the image , this will especially help if the image is clickable. It sort of counts like anchor text of the image.
-
Hey Ludo
Have you read Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox? There is a great chapter in that book about image optimisation for e-commerce. It is not really a technical discussion and it would seem you know about that but rather it is a guideline to help you convert image search results (or image results in the blended results) into useful traffic.
The main push is that when someone clicks on the image to visit your site that they land on a page that clearly signposts what they need to do from there.
There is a pretty good post about this here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/is-optimizing-photos-more-important-than-you-think
The Vanessa fox book is well worth picking up though as well!
Hope it helps
Marcus
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I optimize dynamic content for SEO?
Hello, folks! I'm wondering how I optimize a site if it is built on a platform that works based on dynamic content. For example, the page pulls in certain information based on the information it has about the user. Not every user will see the same page. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Geonetric
Lindsey0 -
Any insight on optimizing a single URL for locations in different states?
What good/bad experiences have people had trying to optimize a single URL for multiple locations in different states? eg optimizing a page of the site for "dentist atlanta", "dentist orlando", and "dentist miami" (the client has offices in all these locations). Has anyone found that Google has an algorithm that get's suspicious if you try to optimize a given URL for either too many locations and/or for locations that are too far apart?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson2 -
[E-commerce] Duplicate content due to color variations (canonical/indexing)
Hello, We currently have a lot of color variations on multiple products with almost the same content. Even with our canonicals being set, Moz's crawling tool seems to flag them as duplicate content. What we have done so far: Choosing the best-selling color variation (our "master product") Adding a rel="canonical" to every variation (with our "master product" as the canonical URL) In my opinion, it should be enough to address this issue. However, being given the fact that it's flagged as duplicate by Moz, I was wondering if there is something else we should do? Should we add a "noindex,follow" to our child products and "index,follow" to our master product? (sounds to me like such a heavy change) Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EasyLounge0 -
How to optimize for local when client has a regus office?
Anyone know how to optimize for local when client has a regus office? I heard it doesn't work so well because the offices are temporary and so many have used the same exact address over and over. True? Any way around it? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
International Image SEO - one host vs multiple hosts
I've got 3 sites (same name) located in Australia, US and UK. Currently these sites are all pulling images (I own) from 1 location. I'd like to create image XML sitemaps for each of these sites. As I see it, my options are: 1. Keeping the images hosted in the 1 place and creating image XML sitemaps for each of the 3 sites (which seems to be technically ok because https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en&ref_topic=20986 states that if the image URL isn't on the same domain, both domains need to be verified in Webmaster Tools). However, is there a risk here that the sitemaps will conflict because they are pulling from images on the same host? 2. Hosting the images locally (ie. the same images will be hosted in 3 locations) and applying hreflang in the sitemap. Does anyone know which of these options are best (obviously #1 would be more convenient), or whether there are any other options for attacking this issue? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oline1230 -
Optimizing Product Catalogs for Multiple Brick & Mortar Locations
We're working on a project for a retail client who has multiple (5+) brick and mortar store locations in a given geographical area. They're regional, so they have locations in multiple states. We're optimizing their content (coupons, events, products, etc) across their site, but we're running into the issue of ranking well for specific products in one location, but not as well (or not at all) in others. The keywords we would like to rank for generally aren't super competitive, we're dealing with commodity products in local retail markets, so in most cases, good on page optimization is enough to rank in the top couple results. Our current situation: (specific examples are fictitious but representative) Title: My Company | Dogwood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA, Rocky Mt, NC, Rock Hill, SC…
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cballinger
Url: http://mycompany.com/catalog/product/dogwood-trees The content on the page is generally well optimized. We've claimed all the locations in Google places and we've deployed schema.org markup for each location that carries the item on the product page. We have specific location pages that rank well for Company name or Company Name Location, but the actual goal is to have the product page come up in each location. In the example above, we would rank #1 for "Dogwood Trees Fredericksburg VA" or just "Dogwood Trees" if the searcher is in or around Fredericksburg, on the first page for "Dogwood Trees Rocky Mt, NC", but not at all for any other locations. As these aren't heavily linked to pages, this indicates the title tag + on page content is probably our primary ranking factor, so as Google cuts the keyword relevance at the tail of the title tag, the location keywords stop helping us. What is the proper way to do this? A proposed solution we're discussing is subfolder-ing all the locations for specific location related content. For Example: My Company | Dog wood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA, Rocky Mt, NC, Rock Hill, SC…http://mycompany.com/catalog/product/dogwood-trees Becomes: My Company | Dogwood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA
http://mycompany.com/fredericksburg-va/product/dogwood-trees My Company | Dogwood Trees - Rocky Mt, NC
http://mycompany.com/rocky-mt-nc/product/dogwood-trees My Company | Dogwood Trees - Rock Hill, SC
http://mycompany.com/rock-hill-sc/product/dogwood-trees Of course, this is the definition of duplicate content, which concerns me, is there a "Google approved" way to actually do this? It's the same exact tree being sold from the same company in multiple locations. Google is essentially allowing us to rank well for whichever location we put first in the title tag, but not the others. Logically, it makes complete sense that a consumer in Rock Hill, SC should have the same opportunity to find the product as one in Fredericksburg, VA. In these markets, the client is probably one of maybe three possible merchants for this product within 20 miles. As I said, it's not highly competitive, they just need to show up. Any thoughts or best practices on this would be much appreciated!2 -
E-Commerce site - How do I geo-target towns/cities/states if there aren't any store locations?
Site = e-commerce Products = clothing (no apparel can be location specific like sports gear where you can do the location specific team gear (NBA, NFL, etc)) Problems = a. no store front b. I don't want to do any sitewides (footers, sidebars, etc) because of the penguin update Question = How do you geo-target these category pages and product pages? Ideas = a. reviews with clients locations b. blog posts with clients images wearing apparel and location description and keywords that also links back to that category or be it product page (images geo- targeted, tags, and description) c. ? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0 -
Canonical and optimization
Hi, I was thinking: If I had 4 pages, each of them optimized for an especific keyword, but set a canonical url to another page, would this another page rank for the 5 specific keywords? Ex: Page 1- Shoes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroVillalobos
Page 2- Snickers
Page 3- Socks
Page 4- Feet
All set the canonical url to Page 5 Page 5 will rank for all this four keywords?0