Alt image tags not being read by on-page optimization tool
-
Can bots see the keyword among other words in aIt image tags? For example, if the keyword is upholstery leather and the image tag says "our upholstery leather collection" will the keyword be recognized? Another example is buy leather. I have a image tag on a slide that reads "free samples before you buy leather" but an on-page analysis in moz does not show an alt tag title for buy leather? Same problem with an moz on-page analysis of the term upholstery leather.
Thanks!
Hunter
-
Good point. Just ran it through W3 and everything was spic and span clean..1.0 Strict compliance! The site is Leather Hide Store if you want to see but again, maybe a question for team moz.
Hunter
-
Sure. If it's only done 3x and genuinely descriptive, you're probably good.
As for why 'moz pro might not be seeing it, it's indeed tough to say, but I'd start by double-checking that you have valid code using http://validator.w3.org. If there's a tag left open or a quote out of place, that can muck things all up.
-
Hi Corey,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I actually only have upholstery leather mentioned on the page 3x and the moz on-page optimization report said I needed a fourth. Titling the alt img upholstery leather was perfect b/c it is an accurate description of the image and (I thought) would be recognized as the 4th mention of the keyword on the page. My question (or problem) is why is the moz on-page optimizer not reading it? I am glad to here the the googlebots will recognize the keyword even when enclosed by other text. One thought just occurred to me and that is the images are hyperlinked...could that influence it? Maybe a question best posed to the moz team?
Thanks,
Hunter
-
Hi Hunter.
1. Yes, search engines definitely read text inside of image ALT tags.
2. Yes, you should absolutely use them, every time. Among other important applications, they're used by screen readers for the blind. Having a handicap-accessible site, among other things, immediately places your site in a league above the competition in terms of overall quality.
3. Maybe, on the scope of keyword uses that you mentioned. You'll need to be very, very careful on how you use keywords in hidden tags like this. There was a time when keyword density was everything to Google, and black hat SEO's stuffed the crap out of these hidden tags with their keywords. Nowadays, the help that you give yourself, keyword-wise, for Google's standard (non-image) search, from ALT tags, is really negligible. It's much more about the above (having a useful description, just in those scenarios that it's really necessary). Most of the time, when I see a client trying something like this, they've invited massive penalties on themselves from abusing it. It's much easier to hurt yourself than help yourself through "optimizing" a lot of on-page factors like these, so be careful and keep these tags succinct / genuinely descriptive.
Good luck.
-C
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
-
Keyword ranking for different page than the page optimized
I have optimized "equipment trailer for rent" on this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-deckover. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me why Google has chosen to rank the keyword phrase for this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-24 This is just one example. It has happened on several of my pages / keywords.
On-Page Optimization | | BigTrailerRentals0 -
Why is this page not ranking?
Can you please tell me why this page is not ranking. http://goo.gl/BqoRT The page doesn't rank at all for keywords but even if I copy a line or 2 of text it still doesn't rank for that text. Any help will be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | JillB20130 -
10 Mobile Pages. 5 Desktop Pages. Canonnical to where?
I have a mobile site with more pages than the desktop site. Normally I would just point the page equivalents to the desktop site using the rel canonnical tag. What about the 5 pages? Do I just leave them be? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Imajery0 -
Keywords to optimize
In the menu there's an item with a submenu with 4 items (pages) and another item with a submenu with almost the same pages with a litle bit different content. The problem is that one keyword can be applied and must be applied to the similar pages (the topic is very similar). I guess the number of keywords that we optimize is also important too. Optimizing minimun 8 keywords seems to me very hard. I' was told to optimize for a very low number of keywords but then we have the problem of redundancy. What should I do? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Duplicate Page Content on Empty Manufacturer Pages
I work for an internet retailer that specializes in pet supplies and medications. I was going through the Crawl Diagnostics for our website, and I saw in the Duplicate Page Content section that some of our manufacturer pages were getting flagged. The way our site is set up is that when products are discontinued we mark them as discontinued and use 301 redirects to redirect their URLs to other relevant products, brands, or our homepage. We do the same thing with brand and manufacturer pages if all of their products are discontinued. 90% of the time, this is a manual process. However, the other 10% of the time certain products come and go automatically as part of our inventory system with one of our fulfillment partners. This can sometimes create empty manufacturer pages. I can't redirect these empty pages because there's a chance that products will be brought back in stock and the page will be populated again. What can we do so that these pages won't get marked as duplicates while they're empty? Write unique short descriptions about the companies? Would the placement of these short descriptions matter--top of the page under the category name vs bottom of the page underneath where the products would go? The links in the left sidebar, top, and in the footer our part of our site architecture, so those are always going to be the same. To contrast, here's what a manufacturer page with products looks like: Thanks! http://www.vetdepot.com/littermaid-manufacturer.html
On-Page Optimization | | ElDude0 -
Why does my on-page report card say my page title is 403 forbidden when its not?
I'm trying to get on top of my on page stuff and I'm going through the SEO Moz on-page report cards and it says I'm scoring a fail on certain elements within the 'critical' and 'high importance' factors as my page title is '403 forbidden' but when I go on to my site, my sites CMS it's not '403 forbidden' it's the text I entered?
On-Page Optimization | | jamesj35mm0 -
Title tag for category page
I'd like to know your views on the best approach for title tags for category pages for ecommerce sites. 3 examples A) Category name | Free delivery on $50 purchase | Brand name B) Discover best "category name" on brand name C) Category Name | 1st Keyword, 2nd keyword | Brand name Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
Opinions on Alt tags
Reading around the web, there are many sources that suggest all images should have an Alt tag attributed to them. This is good for accessibility etc, however there appears to be conflicting interests between this and what works for SEO. Hence many other sources suggest that you include a keyphrase or two in 1 image Alt tag, and then leave the rest blank so as not to dilute the alts on the page. In my experience, the latter appears to be true. However this seems wrong when the Alt attribute really should be used for accessibility reasons and not for SEO - why would the search engines encourage us to provide poorer quality information by harming our rankings if we try to make a website accessible? Interested to hear your opinions and experiences on this subject. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0