Image Alt Text: Do I Need to Link my Image for it to Count?
-
Hi
I learned from a very senior SEO that I must link my images if I want Google to read my alt tag for my images.
I don't believe this though... is it true?
If the answer is not true (which I suppose it is), then maybe you can help me answer this:
1. was he confused or why would he tell me this?
2. i didn't know what i should do so now, whenever i embed an image on my blog posts, i just link them to the blog post in which the image shows... in essence, by clicking the image, the page gets refreshed.
does this sound like a good strategy for images?
thanks in advance!!!
-
Paul,
excellent response. thank you so much.
i use Yoast SEO plugin. Why do you say the yoast image 'redirect' is not the same thing as I am doing? It seems like the exact same?
Ben
-
Agree with Francisco!
if this senior is your BOSS lol i have had a boss in one of ex company i worked for! THe only difference is he called himself an expert!
-
I'm with Francisco - whoever told you that is flat out wrong.
The alt tag in it's purest function is to provide a text description of images for vision-impaired page visitors. It is designed to be read by screen-reader software so the visually impaired can still understand what the image is and how it relates to the rest of the page. There is absolutely no reason a link would need be included in order for the alt attribute to do its job. Put another way - the alt attribute is applied to the img source tag. The link tag (href) is totally separate.
As far as what you're doing now, the link is totally extraneous and would probably annoy/confuse a user who though clicking on a linked image should actually take them somewhere else.
Unlike Francisco, I strongly suggest, unless you're linking to a larger version of the same image, that you simple include no link at all. Having it link to its attachment page in WordPress is also a very bad idea as that creates huge numbers of very thin-content pages which give no value to the visitor, cause major site-crawling problems and are worthless if they get ranked in image search.
There's even a setting in Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin to handle this issue by redirecting the attachment page back to the original blog post the image appeared on. (Note this is not the same as what you're currently doing) Again, if Wordpress, simply set None for the link URL.
Hope that makes sense?
Paul
-
-
I think he may have been confused. I have never heard of that. The img alt"" attribute works for SEO, but I have never heard that you needed it to <h ref="">to something in order for it to work. </h>
-
Don't do that. You're just creating loops.
If this senior SEO is your boss, then just link it to the regular image as it's done in WordPress. It won't hurt anything.
-
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
-
Anchor Text and over optimization
Hello everyone, I would like to have your expert (hopefully) opinion on one thing: I am working on a specifi page of a pretty big site, and I noticed one thing in particular. This page is linked to from a lots of internal pages (which is ok) but the anchor text used is in most cases the exact keyword they would like to rank for. I know this is not generally a good thing, but I guess they have so many links with that particular anchor because of the breadcrumbs, and this actually makes sense. Now, if this is the case, how could we work this out (if this is an issue)? Or probably this is not an issue since those links don’t carry a lot of SEO weight…don’t know. Thanks for your opinion on this 🙂
Technical SEO | | Bizio1 -
How would I make an image sitemap for a site with 50k images?
Is it worth creating an image sitemap? I read an image sitemap can only have 1k entries would I need to make 50 different ones?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
How to set up internal linking with subcategories?
I'm building a new website and am setting up internal link structure with subcategories and hoping to do so with best Seo practices in mind. When linking to a subcategory's main page, would I make the internal link www.xxx.com/fishing/ or www.xxx.com/fishing/index.html or does it matter? I'm just trying to avoid duplicate content I guess, if Google saw each page as a separate page. Any other cautions when using subdirectories in my navigation?
Technical SEO | | wplodge0 -
Someone is building anchor text links with child porn keywords..help :-(
Hey Everyone; I recently found that there are tons of links to my url (30+) from several sites with the anchor text "download child porn, kiddie porn, and the likes". Although the sites linking to us where the person built the links do not have this content (thank god) it is just my url + the horrible anchor text someone is putting. [added image] Obviously I would not do that to my own site especially since I was ranked for over 15 keywords in the top 5 spots on Google and Bing. I am guessing its a competitor and I am wondering that is there any way I can remove them? Is this negative seo? Also could this be the reason my site has dropped off google page 1 last month for all my positions? I am consistently trying to rebuild but my positions are flying all over the place. Im going from ranking #12 one week to #198 the next; then to #60 and finally not even on google or bing anymore; then back to #50, etc for the past month and a half... Its very aggravating and it has hurt a few of my websites; im at a total loss on how to recover now if this is the case...It seems they have started to build these links in January from what I can find on the postings.. Thank you SEOMOZ im so happy im a member now. Any suggestions on how i can get these links off or if it is why my site has lost its original rankings.. Should I just can my website and start all over with a different URL? How can I watch out for this in the future? Any help would be so so so greatly appreciated and valued 🙂 xpVjMw8
Technical SEO | | Circa0 -
Site-Wide Header image w/ Link hurting me?
I have a banner in the header that is constant across all pages except the one it links to. It goes in before the content div and this search term is #1 across google in almost every variation, but it appears to link in a lot of the non relevant pages for #2 spots in some cases. While this is a relatively new domain (started 03/12), but this has been a constant rank for about 2 months. I'm wondering if this may be hurting the keyword targeting of my internal pages and if i should no follow that header image on all pages except the homepage?
Technical SEO | | choiceenergy0 -
Google Places - need to update
I've got a client who verified their Google Places listing years ago, and noone knows who so I can't access it. The business is now moving and I need to update the address. What should I do? thanks
Technical SEO | | garymeld0 -
Link Share Matrix
Our developers have requested our "Link Share Matrix" - does anyone know what a Link Share Matrix is? Google and the Wiki haven't provided any decent results so I still don't know exactly what it is. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Seaward-Group0 -
If you add a no follow to a time sensitive link, will it get picked up as broken link 404 in WMT report?
We have a client who publishes deals that are time sensitive. Links to the deals expire and so Google's crawlers are picking them up and finding a 404 If I no follow them, will the 404's still get picked up and reported in WMT? The same question applies to SEOMoz Pro.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0