Question about overoptimization and images "alt"
-
Hello,
I own a shop with lots of categories, in each category there is a lot of pictures, some have already alt, must I put the attribute alt in all images, it would be 100% beneficial for my site or could would I be over-optimizing the site?
Thank you
-
Nadir-
I'd always recommend putting in an Alt tag on images, to describe what the image shows.
The Alt tag was developed originally for text-only browsers or visually impaired visitors to a website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_attribute
According to the W3C's accessibility site:
http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility
"The power of the Web is in its universality.
Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide WebAccording to the w3Schools.com site, the Alt tag (attribute) is one of two required attributes for the tag:
The tag has two required attributes: src and alt.
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_img.aspThe Mozilla Develper forum says that setting the Alt tag "attribute to the empty string indicates that this image is not a key part of the content"
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ImgThe latest version of Dreamweaver won't allow you to add an image onto a static HTML page, without using an Alt tag either.
So, yes, you should try to always use the Alt tag, in my opinion.
That said, Alt tags shouldn't be stuffed with keywords. If you do that, it will hurt you in the long run.
Best practice is to describe the image.
Hope this helps,
-- Jeff -
The problem with keywords on ecommerce sites is there tends to be lots of images of similar things and people end up using the same keywords over and over, which brings down their value as an indicator of what the image is. Sure it can help but as page-level factors start weighing less and less and keywords loose footing as a factor, keywords in alt tags become an even lower priority. My opinion is you're better off having fun with creating your alt tags than tying yourself to using keywords in each of them.
-
Hi Chris,
I've heard for eCommerce websites that appropriately naming your image file and alt text are key to good onsite optimisation. As eCommerce sites have little content on core pages, particularly category pages, search engines rely on the filename and alt text to discern keywords. Is there truth to this or has this become outmoded?
-
Nadir,
The alt tag is your opportunity to describe the picture to those who cannot see it because they have their images turned off. Think of the purpose the image has on the page visually and then try to boil that purpose down to a short phrase that achieves the same purpose. They don't carry a lot of weight algorithmically so don't feel tied to keywords when writing them.
-
Making sure that each image has alt text would not be considered over-optimisation. With a site like yours, I would suggest using alt tag keywords that appropriately describes the image, instead of using specific targeted keywords too heavily. When creating your alt text, consider what the user might be searching for - and perhaps do a little research - but make sure that the text you're using really is directly relevant to the image, as opposed to the overall landing page.
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
-
When using long-tail keywords, should you exactly match for the url or delete "in" "to" etc.?
long-tail keyword - "seizures in adults with no history" Should you include "in and with" in the url?
On-Page Optimization | | Moleculera0 -
Alt Tags on multiple product images
Hi I work on SEO for an ecommerce site and wanted to find out how important it is to optimise all images with alt tags. We have alt tags in place, however have not optimised descriptions for the following example images: Front of cupboard Back of cupboard Side of cupboard etc Is this dangerous for SEO if these images all have the same alt tag? We have thousands of products so it would be a huge job to update these, but if it's crucial for SEO we can work through our priorities. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate content - "Same" profile-information
Hi, I own a casting website with lots of profiles. Some of these profiles only typed in their firstname, email and age, when they registered on the site, and they haven't added more information ever since. From Crawl Diagnostics, I can see that there is "lots" of these profiles, which looks exactly the same (only showing age and firstname), allthought they are not the same. I could add which day the profile were created on the site, to maybe avoid these "duplications". The email will always be hidden. Or, how big an issue is this? Crawl Diagnostics tells me, that there is around 200 of these, and they are "marked" as High Priority. Any ideas on what to do? /Kasper
On-Page Optimization | | KasperGJ0 -
Silly question about noindex and canonical
Hi, This is probably going to sound a bit stupid, but I nevertheless want to check. We have a site that's going to have identical pages (really not my choice) for a sales reason. The two examples would be example.com/profile-name and example.com/location/profile-name Users using the onsite navigation will always end up in the latter example naturally as they have to select a location before viewing content (plus having the location in the url is nice as there are multiple profiles across different locations that have the same name). However, it's easier to sell our services when we can offer just example.com/profile-name to users for their own marketing reasons. I'd like to make the example.com/profile-name noindex follow, and have just the example.com/location/profile-name indexed, but not sure if it would be better to implement canonical tags instead? Can anyone see any potential pitfalls of using either method or does it not really make a difference (which is what I suspect, but I'd rather look stupid than get this wrong)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Pagination for image galleries
We have photo galleries that load new URLs with new content/photo on each page, yet I'm still seeing "duplicate meta description" in GWT for each separate URL in the gallery. Will rel="next" rel="prev" take care of this? Just want to confirm as it requires a CMS upgrade/release.
On-Page Optimization | | Aggie0 -
Rel canonical tag question
Im trying to to fix my duplicate content problem with my catagory pages in my shopping cart. I have read about adding a rel canonical tag to the page so it links back to the main catagory page. So if I add a rel canonical tag to the main catagory page it will show up on every other page for that catagory like page 1 page 2 and so on and it will have the tag linking back to the main cat. That should fix it it right? Now that being said I cant seem to add the tag invetween the head tags. I can add it to the body where I can add content. Will the rel canonical tag work outside the head tags? Any other ideas on this fix? I contacted my people that host the cart to see if they have any features to help this will see what they say.
On-Page Optimization | | Dataken0 -
Keyword Stuffing in Alt Tags!
Hello, I have on a main page over 50 images. The first page i want to optimize it for MAINKW (let's say). Now, if i use in the alt tags "MAINKW KW1", "MAINKW KW2", "MAINKW KW3" ... "MAINKW KW50" then Google may say that i stuff the MAINKW in that page? Those images are reprezentative for main Categories and i have direct links to them from the main page with the anchors KW1, KW2...KW50.
On-Page Optimization | | VertiStudio0 -
Rel="canonical"
Can you tell me if we've implemented rel="canonical" properly? We want this to be our primary: http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- while this would be duplicate and refer robots back to the URL above: http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6054284 We've added the following to both pages: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- "/> Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jonesatl0