How much SEO value does a fashion site get from bolting text onto the bottom of home page? Does the value compensate for cluttering up a page focused on an iconic image?
-
Getting ready to launch a completely redesigned site for a fashion designer. Since it is a fashion site, visitors do not need text to describe what the site is about., We are weighing three options: 1) clean design with no text (just images and navigational links), 2) bolting on a couple of sentences of text at the bottom of the page to signal keyword terms to the search engines, 3) following the lead of the top ranking site in the category and adding lots of text to the bottom of the page.
Do the SEO benefits justify cluttering up the design by bolting text onto the bottom of the home page, and if so, how many characters of text seem to be the minimum to be effective?
-
Nice work!
-
I am going to close out the conversation by thanking the respondents and admitting that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Google's current rankings for the most competitive keywords in my niche have become highly correlated with the sites that have the most comprehensive text. In my opinion, it is providing a skewed result, as many viewers of fashion sites ignore the text, but there is not much sense in fighting the algo. The algo isn't smart enough yet to be able to judge great photography.
-
As the owner of a design firm/SEO agency, I feel justified saying that designers need to grow up a little bit and stop making excuses (imho.) It is not that hard to make a high quality site that includes both text and images. Photographers do it all the time (like this.)
Put information on your site that visitors will actually enjoy reading. Talk about what kind of materials the clothes were made from. You can describe the stitch patterns, the designer, what famous people have worn your clothes (if any) suggestions of how to accessorize the item with other products from your store...etc.
Obviously, you should find tactful and organic ways of including that information. In closing, I'd like to point out that sites without textual content rarely out-rank their competitors. Even PR 7-10 sites like Facebook & Pinterest are not able to rank for pictures without text.
-
Agreeing with everyone here, text is vital. Perhaps the non-text sites that rank do so because no other sites compete with them meaning links alone are placing them up high (i.e. no SEO optimization). Imagine being able to add some nice text to a well designed page and quickly gaining great placement.
As well as permanent introductory text I'd also recommend adding text that will change out, like a placement for the hottest fashion accessory and another for the hottest designer. Have these change out regularly and also link through to lower level pages. This will also give people another reason to come back, just like a womens gossip magazine, people buy them week after week because they know content is updated often.
-
Randy those two sites are VERY well known brands - they can get away with less content to a certain extent (they're going to get a lot of natural links easily). I agree with EGOL, text is very important. Add some content about what your site is about, deep links to some key pages on your site, blog excerpts etc. Remember, getting visitors to your site and then off your homepage to other areas of your site is the key, not some fancy banner that takes up half the page and 'looks nice'.
-
My previous response makes a bit more sense if I added the word "fashion" in front of the word designer in the first sentence. I totally agree that letting "web" or "graphic' designers make final decisions about web pages is a deadly mistake. However, when developing for a fashion house and the fashion designer is also paying the bills, his opinion counts for a lot, even if it is lousy SEO. On a anecdotal note, one of the most competitive terms in the fashion industry in "wedding dresses". The top ranked designer site has a lot of text in their links, but virtually no other textual content. So here is an anecdotal example that text content is not necessary to rank well for a fashion site. However, it is obviously foolhardy to give a lot of weight to a single example that may just be an exception to the rule.
-
I know lots of designers who are adamant about their opinions.... but very few to none of them have done A/B testing to determine the impact of their designs on visitors, conversions or search engines.
Lots of redesigns tank when they go up. Traffic drops or conversions drop or rankings drop. Or a combination of these.
I am all ears to hear about case studies... but don't have a lot of faith in untested opinions.
I let my visitors inform me of how the design is working. They are the voice that counts.
-
Many designers, who ultimately approve the design of their sites, would disagree with your opinion. A couple of examples of sites with minimal text on the home page are, marcjacobs.com and versace.com. Obviously, the fact that there are examples of sites with home pages with minimal text does not mean it it appropriate, maybe just the in way to go. But then again, being on trend is everything in the fashion industry
-
Visitors don't need text? I find that difficult to believe. People like to read about fashion, as you can see from the numerous fashion blogs that get tons of hits. If the design wasn't created with text in mind, it sounds like the design needs to be changed.
-
My homepage looks like the homepage of the LATimes.com.
Tons of text.
Intentional.
Those tons of text pull in thousands long tail visitors.
So, if I removed all of that text and slapped up an image I would loose a lot of visitors, a lot of income and a lot of SEO benefit that those visitors produce through likes links tweets and shares.
Nobody is going to "bolt" anything onto my site. I would tell the designer... "This text is an essential part of the design... non negotiable. Use your creativity to make it look great."
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
-
Do keywords within a dropdown menu add any SEO value?
I haven't seen this written about in some time. Has anyone had any experience dabbling in this?
On-Page Optimization | | gregvellante0 -
How to have H1 keywords on EVERY Page but not destroy user experience for holiday rental site
Hi all, as a Newbie getting my holiday home rental site up & running, I just cannot find a clear answer to this after many hours research. Moz & everyone else advises I need to optimise by ensuring my keywords are in my H1s, that H1s need to be on every page, more than 20 characters, but still unique, relevant, a statement of the content, appealing to users & not keyword stuffed. How can I include my keywords ("holiday home tasmania" & "tasmania holiday rentals") in the heading on EVERY page & still make every heading unique, relevant & not keyword stuffed? I only have 10 pages Home / The Space / Amenities / Location / About / Guide / House Rules / Reviews / Contact & they by nature need to be information based, not designed like a more creative Blog (which I will add later). Eg - my Amenities page which is a quick reference list so people can easily see inclusions & find if we have features they need/want. It seems really awkward & not in keeping with the chic, designer image I am trying to project to have "Amenities At Your Holiday Home Tasmania", "Three Beaches Tasmania Holiday Rental Location", "About This Beach Holiday Home Tasmania", "Your Guide To The Best Of Your Holiday Accommodation's Local Area", House Rules Of Your Chic Holiday Home Tasmania", "It's Easy To Contact Your Next Tasmania Holiday Rental" Much of the information out there including Moz's seems to be oriented towards blogs where there is a lot more creative freedom for an expressive H1, rather than a service business in a competitive space where people need to access facts & features quickly in order to make a buying decision & are very quickly going to notice & be irritated by the use of similar sounding phrases in every headline AND sprinkled throughout the page content. Many thanks, Cherie - Australia
On-Page Optimization | | Luminatrix1 -
Opinions on leaving Non-SEO Pages without a H1
This one is pestering me and i am on the fence, so i thought i'd ask the trusty Moz community for their opinion. I am running a technical / onsite audit for a client who has quite a pretty, creative and animated homepage with lots of overlaid imagery. As its primarily imagery, including their glossy typography and clickable links, the page does not have a H1. Now i know this goes against best practice, however it's unlikely the page will ever be served as an SEO landing page (in current format), so what are people's thoughts on leaving as is without a H1, considering we are not going to try and ranking the landing page for any particular keywords. Let us know your thoughts! Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1230 -
How i can make this page more valuable from SEO perspective ???? any suggestion ?
Hi experts , how i can improve following page . please share your thoughts. https://www.protoexpress.com/content/quicklinks.jsp Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | SierraPCB0 -
How many Anchor text i can make on One page.
I would like to have clear answer in numbers i.e. 1, 2, 3, or 4 etc. of how many Anchor text i can make on One page.????
On-Page Optimization | | 1akal0 -
Is there a problem when passages of text are repeating on varios pages?
Hi Everybody, I am working on travel-pages and there are 4 tours that all start their itinerary in "Manaus", so I have 4 pages containing all a passage of the same text about Manaus. How will Google interpret this? Just pick one of the four pages in relation to Manaus Keywords and index, or index none of them? What should I do, because there is no canonical tag for parts of pages? I'm curious about what you think 🙂 Best regards,
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear
Holger0 -
How Can I Get Yahoo to Index My Site?
How Can I Get Yahoo to Index My Site? I have installed Bing webmaster tool two months ago -- is Yahoo that slow. My site has been out since May 2010 and for a year and a half, I only have 40 pages index. HELP!!!!
On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup0 -
Better for SEO to use a hyphen in the name of a website to break up text?
To maximize SEO, would it be better to use a hyphen between two words in the name of a website? For instance, www.londonparis.com or www.london-paris.com. Would it be OK to use www.LondonParis.com Many thanks in advance, Ricardo
On-Page Optimization | | RicardoMello0