SEO benefits of terms used in Alt-tag, image name, page title
-
On our website, we have products that come in different colours, and we have created a different SKU for each one .e.g. our Acacia Evening Dress comes in 3 different colours (black, blue and red) - Acacia Evening Dress Black (J7048BLK), Acacia Evening Dress Blue (J7048RB), Acacia Evening Dress Red (J7048R).
Would it be beneficial for SEO if on the image Alt-tag we used the terms 'Jadore J7048 Red Acacia dress', 'Jadore J7048 Black Acacia dress' and 'Jadore J7048 Blue Acacia dress', because 'Acacia' is the internal name we have given to this dress, not the name provided by the label, Jadore, as more customers would search for terms such as 'black dress' or 'Jadore J7048'? Can we use the same terms in the Alt-tag on the image and the page title? How important is the Alt-tag in searching?
-
Ecommerce marketplace for local classes here. We have over 3K SKUs on the site and I'd agree with what Dimitrii suggested. As an add-on to what he said, I'd also strongly suggest that you ensure the site's overall SEO architecture is well positioned to rank on a variety of keywords (depending on what your keyword research says of course).
For example,
-
Our home page targets the broadest keywords (local classes etc.)
-
Category pages targets 2nd tier keywords (baking classes, cooking classes etc)
-
Product pages targets long-long-tail keywords (macaron baking class in the east)
I find that this approach works very well for ecommerce sites with a broad range of categories. In your case, Evening Dresses might be a category of it's own, with each SKU page ranking for its own long-tail keywords. As Dimitrii mentioned as well, image search does contribute a fair amount of traffic on it's own, and we've even received backlinks from site-owners who found our image via image search, and credited our site with a backlink
It's best to optimize the images you post up to be as descriptive as possible. Being an ecommerce site owner, I personally know your pain with hundreds if not thousands of SKUs, but cumulatively, it does make an impact and will help!
-
-
Hi there.
You sure can add whatever you want. The question is about if it's going to help your SEO. If you going to have "buy online in australia" in title, meta, content, alt-tags then it is going to be overstuffing.
What you should be doing is "theme-ing" pages. Each page should target 1-2 related keywords with supportive content for those keywords (lets say pictures with related names, titles, alt-tags etc).
ALWAYS think of user experience. As I mentioned before - alt-tags are for when img does load or for visually impaired. So, if i get "best wedding dress store" instead of image of a dress - that's not cool. However, it would be ok to have something like "designer wedding dress - online store in sydney". Basically, you can incorporate descriptive, promotional and seo words together.
Hope this helps.
-
Dear Dmitrii,
Thank you so much for your reply. It is very helpful.
We are a bridal store selling wedding dresses and bridesmaids dresses. We are wanting to know how much our URL and page title can differ, whilst still optimising SEO.
For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the url is wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title?
For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"?
Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, apart from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing?
In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag?
Thank you.
-
Hi there.
The purpose of alt tag is to describe the image if doesn't load and for visually impaired users, who use screen reader programs. So, i would go with more descriptive "black dress" than not-telling-me-anything "jadore 1234".
Also alt tag is used a lot in image search, so, if your business can benefit from image search, then it would make sense to include a little more details in alt tag than "black dress". Maybe something like "affordable jadore flared black dress - 'company name'".
Hope this helps.
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
-
Google images not showing on SERP
Hi, I recently noticed that after a specific name search, Google images on the 'Web' SERP are no longer showing up. About a month ago, there were atleast 4-5 headshots of this particular person showing up whenever his name was searched. Now no images are showing, just the ten organic links and two links from adwords campaign we have going. The images are still optimized and some are even from editorial sites. Does anyone know what may have caused the images to disappear and what we can do to bring them back to the main SERP? (Not sure if it matters but we are in Canada) Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | Lorne_Marr0 -
How to best automate batch naming of product images
On an ecommerce website with tens of thousands of products, product image file names are auto generated by your system, and are often just a string of numbers and letters. We optimize our callout images and heroes but I'm questioning if we are missing a big opportunity with our product image names not being optimized. Does anyone have any insight on a smarter way to automate batch naming for thousands of product images?
Image & Video Optimization | | WebLincon0 -
SEO And Images: 2014 Tips
What is a good "image" strategy? All I really know is to make sure to use images that you create yourself and/or images that are approved for free commercial use and add alt tags. Right now, just making sure all our pages have images and updating some of the lower quality ones would surely help us, but I'm hoping someone can add a little detail into how best to use images for seo, conversions and how to avoid slowing our site way down by adding more (we do have the smushit plugin which helps some). Thanks, Ruben Our site is www.kempruge.com
Image & Video Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
G+ Profile and Pages won't let me list categories
Hi Mozzers, I'm working on a client's G+ profile and sub-pages and the competition all have one simple category - 'House Clearance'. When you start typing there is a drop down and this category isn't present for us? Nowhere near.This is what the client does and I can't work out howe to get it in the page? Anyone else had this problem. Thanks Gareth
Image & Video Optimization | | Bush_JSM0 -
Google maps displaying wrong image
Hi, I couldn't figure this out, how do i change image that shows up on the right side for maps results, do i change it in my Google places account ?(which i did and and its a first one) or in Google plus, i just cant get it? Thanks for help.
Image & Video Optimization | | Davidmez0 -
How do I correctly use YouTube?
Hello! I have a someone that does online guitar lessons - their site is www.frethub.com. They use YouTube videos to promote the lessons on their site like this one - http://youtu.be/C1dOYys0H14, they're not the complete lesson but an intro to entice them on. The videos are of a really high quality and have had a few hundred hits in a couple of months - when I did a search on YouTube for "ledato guitar lesson" as an example they were nowhere to be seen despite the quality of the video and using tags etc. Anyway long intro! What I was wondering is are the rankings on YouTube based predominantly on number of hits or is there a way to use the tags better (presently they put in keywords and what comes up in the autosuggest), does how recently they were uploaded, author authority etc have anything to do with it? I appreciate it's a massive subject so any help is much appreciated 🙂 Thanks alot!
Image & Video Optimization | | CharlotteWaller0 -
Google Knowledge Graph - change bio image
I have a client who is a well known personality in a particular niche that I've done some general event and design work for, but he hasn't had interest in SEO or social help until this point. He is very displeased by the image that was chosen for his Google Knowledge Graph result when you search his name. The issue isn't due to a poor photo, but rather due to the site it links through to. Google has chosen to use a bio image for his Knowledge Graph result which links to an "anti-" site. This site is opposed to the organization he leads. If you click on the image, it sends you to an image result page backed by an article which is full of misinformation and overall negativity about this individual. The source is also listed under the image on the Knowledge Graph result, a source he doesn't believe deserves any publicity, especially in conjunction with his name. So, what best practices might you suggest should be employed to go about getting Google to choose a replacement image for his Knowledge Base bio? Optimize his own bio page and bio image on his website? Get an image on his Wikipedia page? Create a G+ page with the bio image? Integrate the rel author syntax into his articles pointing back to his bio page? He doesn't want this to become a public matter, so he's against posting the issue to Google's Help Boards or reporting it in a public fashion. I'm not sure what should be the best first steps and top priorities for him and am hoping the SEOmoz team is starting to see some trends with Knowledge Graph. Let me know your thoughts when you can. Thanks so much! iLqNW iLqNW.png
Image & Video Optimization | | windturbines2 -
Which domain to use for SE business listings?
For a first time, new website. I have a Barber shop in Hartford named "Dixie Cutters" with two domains, dixiecutters.com and barberhartford.com. Obviously the latter domain has two main keywords, barber and location...Hartford. So it would be better to use that and use a 301 redirect for dixiecutters.com to redirect to barberhartford.com. Many online directories including SE listings on Google Places, BIng and Yahoo have already been set up withe domain "dixiecutters.com" and the email address [email protected]. If I choose to make barberhartford.com the primary domain with dixiecutters.com 301 redirecting to it....does this mean that I should then change the directory listings and more specifically, the SE business listings so that they have the primary domain listed (barbarhartford.com) with an email address [email protected]? Or can I leave all of this alone and keep as stated above without any SEO local consequences. I know consistency is a big issue with NAP. I also know it's recommended to use an email address with your domain name in the SE business listings. If a 301 is in place, can I use dixiecutters.com in my listings?
Image & Video Optimization | | MozMan20