Combining images with text as anchor text
-
Hello everyone,
I am working to create sub-category pages on our website virtualsheetmusic.com, and I'd like to have your thoughts on using a combination of images and text as anchor text in order to maximize keyword relevancy.
Here is an example (I'll keep it simple):
Let's take our violin sheet music main category page located at /violin/, which includes the following sub-categories:
-
Christmas
-
Classical
-
Traditional
So, the idea is to list the above sub-categories as links on the main violin sheet music page, and if we had to use simple text links, that would be something like:
Christmas
Classical
TraditionalNow, since what we really would like to target are keywords like:
"christmas violin sheet music"
"classical violin sheet music"
"traditional violin sheet music"
I would be tempted to make the above links as follows:
Christmas violin sheet music
Classical violin sheet music
Traditional violin sheet musicBut I am sure that would be too much overwhelming for the users, even if the best CSS design were applied to it. So, my idea would be to combine images with text, in a way to put those long-tail keywords inside the image ALT tag, so to have links like these:
Christmas
Classical
TraditionalThat would allow a much easier way to work the UI , and at the same time keep relevancy for each link. I have seen some of our competitors doing that and they have top-notch results on the SEs.
My questions are:
1. Do you see any negative effect of doing this kind of links from the SEO standpoint?
2. Would you suggest any better way to accomplish what I am trying to do?
I am eager to know your thoughts about this. Thank you in advance to anyone!
-
-
Any more thoughts on this?
-
Thank you Samuel for your reply as well.
Yes, what you describe is exactly what I also learned: no need to be too much "redundant" about keywords, but SEs will understand from the surrounding context... well, fact is some of our competitors are doing what I am suggesting here and they are dominating the 1st spot on Google for most of the keywords we are competing with. They also have a more clear "siloed" category-sub-category structure than us, which suggests this technique combined with the siloing technique help a great deal (also, note that for most category pages we compete with, we have much more external links than them! Hence my though that a more clear, siloed structure could help)
And of course, anything we do is with the user in mind: ALT text is always meant for users first, but I don't see harm in being a little bit redundant on that if it could help with SEO as well, don't you?
Thank you again very much, and please, any additional idea you may have is very welcome!
-
Thank you Rob for your extensive reply.
I see what you mean, and I am aware of that. This "link technique" suggestion is part of a bigger plan I am working on where the goal is to create a more "siloed" structure to increase topical relevancy as I have discussed on this other thread of mine:
https://mza.bundledseo.com/community/q/panda-rankings-and-other-non-sense-issues
And even though that's a minor thing, everything adds up. For example, we have recently moved from http to https and that's also is a minor thing, but adds up with all other improvements we are working on.
As for your suggestion:
"I would consider is replacing the example music videos from your specific instruments pages to your home page so visitors know what kind of quality they are getting if they subscribe."
I don't exactly understand what you mean, are you talking about our own produced Music Expert videos or the YouTube videos inside our product pages submitted by the users?
Thank you again
-
Agreed with Robert, that is a minor optimization but I don't see negative effect SEO wise.
Yes, exact match anchor texts can be powerful, but nowadays search engines rely less on it directly and will leverage text found near the links themselves and elsewhere on the page. Let say having this structure should have a pretty similar impact on giving anchor text weight :
<nav>
More violin sheet music categories
Christmas
Classical
Traditional
</nav>Besides SEO, another thing to consider is the fact that screen readers will read the text in the alt attribute. Think about how it could help (or not) a user to hear : "graphic link christmas violin sheet music" "graphic link classical violin sheet music", etc.
Hope this helps with an added perspective on alt attributes.
-
Hi Fabrizo,
I think I understand what you are asking here, but if not please feel free to rephrase or correct me.
Based on what you are saying, you seem to be going for exact match keywords linked through image alt text for maximum relevancy to your targeted search terms. There aren't really any "problems" with this, but you may be going after a red herring here, even if your competitors are doing well with this tactic:
a) There is no guarantee that this tactic is what is generating the ranking results for their targeted search terms
b) Alt tags and exact match keywords don't carry much weight in terms of your overall ranking potential. That comes from links, content, architecture and various other factors.
I think that you may be expending a bit too much energy on relatively minor factors when you might consider beefing up your link profile, expanding your content base, improving your user experience, etc. This is especially true when you start getting into sub categories - if you are constantly working on the small details you lose the forest because of the trees.
So, to answer your questions directly:
-
No, I don't think there is anything "negative" that will come from this strategy.
-
Yes, I think that this strategy will move the needle but in a very small way compared to building a few powerful, genuine links from relevant sources in your industry. Build up your content, give readers something about violins to be interested in. I took a look at your site and the first thing I would consider is replacing the example music videos from your specific instruments pages to your home page so visitors know what kind of quality they are getting if they subscribe.
It's an uphill battle since your site is effectively an e-commerce store and therefore features a lot of images and uncrawlable content in videos, but adding some content about the value of your service, building links to your category/subcategory pages and improving the user experience is probably where you will get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of rankings.
Hope this helps - I'm always available if you would like to discuss further. Feel free to PM me at any time.
Cheers,
Rob
-
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
-
In our reports we get alt tag errors for our banner images. We are unable to add alt tags to the banner images as they live inside CSS. We can add a title tag on the div title for the banner. Does that help with SEO and accessibility?
We are unable to add alt tags to the banner images as they live inside CSS. We can add a title tag on the div title for the banner. Does that help with SEO and accessibility?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shirley.Fenlason0 -
Google Indexing of Images
Our site is experiencing an issue with indexation of images. The site is real estate oriented. It has 238 listings with about 1190 images. The site submits two version (different sizes) of each image to Google, so there are about 2,400 images. Only several hundred are indexed. Can adding Microdata improve the indexation of the images? Our site map is submitting images that are on no-index listing pages to Google. As a result more than 2000 images have been submitted but only a few hundred have been indexed. How should the site map deal with images that reside on no-index pages? Do images that are part of pages that are set up as "no-index" need a special "no-index" label or special treatment? My concern is that so many images that not indexed could be a red flag showing poor quality content to Google. Is it worth investing in correcting this issue, or will correcting it result in little to no improvement in SEO? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Graphs - Interactive HTML5 or Image?
Hi, Every once in a while I have a need to add a graph / chart to my site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
Google offers a nice HTML5 chart builder and so do other web apps. The question is... Which should I use?
A pinnable and sharable image graph or Interactive html5 graph Thanks0 -
Given the new image mismatch penalty, is watermarking considered "cloaking"?
Google has released a new penalty called "Image mismatch". Which actually penalizes sites that show images to Google than are not the same as the ones offered to users when accessing the site. Although I agree with those sites that the image is completely different that the one shown in image search, lately I've seen lots of big sites using some king of watermark or layer that reads something like "To see the high quality of this image, click here" in order to "force" the user to visit the site hosting the image. Considering the latest changes to Google's image search, which made lots of sites lose their "image search traffic", are these techniques considered part of the new penalty Google is applying? Or does it only apply to the first scenario when the image is completely different? You can read more on this new penalty here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FedeEinhorn0 -
Combining two exact match domains under brand name
I run two websites that sell basically the same product which we make ourselves but to two separate audiences. I've made my living off them for the past 6 years or so. I used emd's in both cases to rank for my main search terms. We dropped a few places last October but not too bad. I was thinking of combining the sites under one brand name hoping that they would rank better combined. Both sites have similar link profiles but with some links unique to each. For instance, I buy a yahoo directory listing for each site but each site has some unique product reviews on blogs. Is this a good idea or am I better off leaving them separate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDP0 -
Best Strategy to display 8mg Images on Product Pages for Ecommerce
I have an ecommerce store that has a variety of images including some super high quality images that are 8 mg. This style of image could be completed for hundreds of products in the store. Does anyone have any tips on what I should be watching out for here? Is 8 mg too unusable?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LukeyJamo0 -
Headline tag for images in Photoshelter
Hello! I use Photoshelter for my commercial photography website: http://www.ioansaidphotography.co.uk/ I'm trying to make it better re SEO and all that by filling as much information as I can. I'm using Picworkflow who give you a title, description and keywords for every picture.. But in Photoshelter's IPTC metadata editor, they put an SEO tag by Headline (essentially saying it's important) and not by title. Do you think it's good/useful/safe to use the info Picworkflow gave me for title and put it in Headline? PS: This is for the pictures individually and not the pages. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0 -
Randomly Displayed Text: Hidden text issue?
I want to add some script to my site so that a given page publishes a different paragraph of text every time the page loads. Something like randomly displayed testimonials (but with more text). So, when you look at the page source, you would see all the text (e.g testimonial-1, testimonial-2, etc.), but the user would only see one paragraph randomly. Would this be considered hidden text (one code for search engine, one for use)? Is there a safe number of words you can do this with without setting off red flags? I appreciate the help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0