Portfolio Image Landing Page Question/Issue
-
Hello,
We have a client with a very image heavy website. They have Portfolio pages with a large number of images. We are currently working on adding more copy to the site but wanted to confirm we are taking the right approach for the images on the site.
Under the current structure each image has its own landing page (with no copy) and is fed in (or generated on) to a Portfolio Page. While we know this is not ideal as it would be best to have the images on the Portfolio Page directly or even fill out the landing pages with copy; due to the amount of images and the fact these are only images (and not a 'targeted' page) that would not really be feasible.
Aside from the thin content concern these individual landing pages were being indexed so they are showing hundreds of pages on their sitemap.xml and in GSC even though they only have a few actual pages.
In the meantime we went into each image-page and placed a canonical tag back to the main Portfolio Page (with the hopes to add content to that page and have it as the ‘overarching’ page). Would this be the right approach? – We considered ‘noindex-follow’ tags but would want the images to be crawled; the issue is because the pages are not on the actual page are we canonicalizing these images to nothing?
Any insight would really be appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
-
Standard operating procedure for us is to nofollow anything we noindex. Theory is that pagerank will still flow through a link to another page that has been noindexed if you don't nofollow it. But since it has been noindexed the PR will just be trapped there and can't move on to another page through any links on that page.
I don't know how true that theory is, but erring on the side of caution has never cost me a dime, and nofollowing links to a page that is noindexed won't have a negative impact.
-
Thanks again. We noticed you mentioned 'nofollowing' the pages but Steve said no-index, follow so we just wanted to confirm which you would recommend for these image/landing pages?
Best,
- B.
-
Thank you both for your answers and help.
I’m not sure why they set it up that way it was executed before I came on board. The site actually has a ‘gallery style’ page (with the enlarging function) but I believe they uploaded them to the Portfolio through those landing page URLs. Still trying to figure out the how and why.
For now we placed ‘no-index,follow’ tags on each image/page and will make sure each image is listed on the sitemap and has the right files names/alt text, which should help thank you.
It’s not how I would have set it up but there are so many images already in this structure. The help is very appreciated and if there is anything I might have missed please let me know.
Thanks again.
Best,
-
Is there some reason you need to have individual landing pages for each image? That's a lot of bloat. Hundreds (or thousands) of unique landing pages with nothing but an image isn't going to convey either relevance or authority to search engines, nor does it sound particularly useful to users.
Since Googlebot can't "see" the images, I would follow Steve's advice and add the images to your sitemap, noindex and nofollowing the pages that lack content. Taking it a step further, I would also make sure the filenames are readable by search engines and alt text is entered for each image. Doing so will help Google understand what the images are and may help display you for relevant queries.
You may want to consider just doing gallery style pages for your portfolios with the option to enlarge a photo to max resolution by clicking on it if you're just trying to let users see a larger image. Probably will help with UX on top of SEO.
-
Maybe think about noindex-follow the thin pages and create an image sitemap to make sure your images are crawled.
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
-
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amarieyoussef0 -
Why does Google display the home page rather than a page which is better optimised to answer the query?
I have a page which (I believe) is well optimised for a specific keyword (URL, title tag, meta description, H1, etc). yet Google chooses to display the home page instead of the page more suited to the search query. Why is Google doing this and what can I do to stop it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
We are switching our CMS local pages from a subdomain approach to a subfolder approach. What's the best way to handle this? Should we redirect every local subdomain page to its new subfolder page?
We are looking to create a new subfolder approach within our website versus our current subdomain approach. How should we go about handling this politely as to not lose everything we've worked on up to this point using the subdomain approach? Do we need to redirect every subdomain URL to the new subfolder page? Our current local pages subdomain set up: stores.websitename.com How we plan on adding our new local subfolder set-up: websitename.com/stores/state/city/storelocation Any and all help is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO.CIC0 -
GWT url parameter issue/question
Hi Moz community, I'm having an issue with URL parameters in GWT. The tracking taxonomy for my websites is used as either /?izid=... (internal) OR /?dzid=... (external) I put tracking parameters in GWT as izid & dzid, but it hasn't picked up any URLs or examples in regards to these parameters. It's been about 2 months since we've started using this so I want to make sure Google isn't indexing as duplicate content. Side note: any page that uses a tracking parameter automatically adds rel="canonical" to the original page. Could this be the reason that GWT doesn't pick up any URLs for tracking parameters and/or do I not need to worry about adding paramters if I already have the canonical attribute automatically in place. Thanks for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Should We Add the W3.org Language Tag To Every Page Or Just The Home Page?
Greetings, We have five international sites around the world, two of which are in difference languages. Currently we have the following line of html code on the home page of each of the sites: Clearly, we need to change the "en" portion for the sites that aren't in English, but, should we include that meta tag in each of the site's pages, or will the home page suffice. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSawatzky0 -
Sitemaps / Google Indexing / Submitted
We just submitted a new sitemap to google for our new rails app - http://www.thesquarefoot.com/sitemap.xml Which has over 1,400 pages, however Google is only seeing 114. About 1,200 are in the listings folder / 250 blog posts / and 15 landing pages. Any help would be appreciated! Aron sitemap.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheSquareFoot0 -
301 a strong but under-performing landing page to a new domain?
Hi guys, Our website have a very strong landing page (PA 80, more than 1,000 domains linking) but is currently not ranking at all as the targeted terms are dominated by exact match domains. We are thinking of redirecting this particular page to a new partial match domain targeting the same keywords. Is it a good move?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0 -
SEOMoz mistaking image pages as duplicate content
I'm getting duplicate content errors, but it's for pages with high-res images on them. Each page has a different, high-res image on it. But SEOMoz keeps telling me it's duplicate content, even though the images are different (and named different). Is this something I can ignore or will Google see it the same way too?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JHT0