Using Alt Text in stock photography good?
-
Hello,
I got a client who told me that he bought his images from a stock photography website. I know it looks awful and all, but the client can't afford a photographer to get some decent pics.
So, How positive it is to use Alt Text on images that aren't yours? The purpose of using alt text properly is to get traffic from an imaged based search right? So if the business shows up with some stock photography it looks kinda bad.
Is it worth optimizing images in this case? Or just leave em without optimizing?
Changing pics isn't an option.
Thanks
-
Thanks for your quick response Aaron. What you said makes sense, and now I can go to bed with no worries.
-
I don't see any reason why not to add alt text to the stock images on your website (I say this both as a site publisher and as a professional photographer). The alt text doesn't imply ownership of the images, but rather it's designed to provide an assistive description as to what the image represents. The only area where I think you would be deceptive is if your alt text claims something that is blatantly false, such as showing a stock image of a man and the alt text indicating that it's a photo of your CEO.
Descriptive alt text, including keywords, will have a positive effect on SEO.
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
-
Anyone Willing or Able to Help Out For A Good Cause? Trying to help a very pleasant women and her son who have recently fallen on hard times
Hi all, Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you are interested in helping out, feel free to direct message me for more information. Earlier this week I received a call from a very pleasant women named Martha. Her son owns a small site dedicated to his work as a pianist (can see the site here). They are having issues gaining traction in Google, they are not tech/search savvy and are looking for SEO help. They really do not have much to spend so partnering with an agency or hiring an SEO is not really an option. The part that is eating me up is the fact that Martha recently lost her husband and that left both of them in a very tough spot emotionally and financially. They are trying to build up visibility for the site with the hopes of finding more work for her son to help support them. Frankly, the site needs a good amount of work. It is a small one-page squarespace website. New pages need to be created, the site needs to be optimized and backlinks need to be acquired. If anyone is willing or able to help, please let me know. I am trying to help them where I can (guidance for how to optimize, they provided me the squarespace login so I may start going in and making changes for them) but unfortunately I do not have the time to give this project the attention that it deserves. Even if it is something as small as throwing a link their way, it would be very much appreciated. It doesn't have to be SEO specific either, if you can help them on social I'm sure that would be appreciated as well. Again, I appreciate you taking the time to read this. If you are interested in helping or just learning more, feel free to message me. Thank you!
Branding | | Joe_Stoffel0 -
LinkedIn & B2B Marketing/Brand Authority: How Useful Is It?
Hi Folks, I'm in the process of drawing up some detailed step by step marketing and content strategy guidelines and I'm currently researching LinkedIn as a platform and the potential benefits for B2B marketing on it and building brand authority. I'm coming across some conflicting data regarding how useful it is. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on the viability of LinkedIn for B2B marketing and building brand authority? A couple of questions would be: Is it a viable B2B marketing platform? Is it a good place to build brand and industry authority? What techniques would you concentrate on over others? Any advice on the subject would be great. Thanks, folks. Regards Gareth
Branding | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Do you think its ethical to use your personal google authorship for outsourced content?
I routinely outsource nicely written content but never use my google authorship for those articles. Should I be adding my google authorship to those articles? Or would that be unethical and violate googles TOS?
Branding | | TShak0 -
Should we use one domain with product-specific sub-domains or separate domains per product?
We are resellers of 4 separate products. Currently we have numerous different websites promoting each product, not all of them use a URL which has any real link to our business - it's only when you land on the page that it contains brand images, etc. We are in the process of redesigning and rebranding, and want to know what would be the best course of action to take in terms of domain registration. This is what we have currently, for example: - www.accounts-solutions.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a branded accounts package. www.software-accounts-systems.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a second branded accounts product. In terms of moving forward with new domains, which are going to contain our business name, our options are as follows: - OPTION 1 - www.our-business-name.co.uk/product1/etc, www.our-business-name.co.uk/product2/etc, www.our-business-name/product3/etc where all products are given separate sub-domains within our main business page. OPTION 2 - www.our-business-name-product1.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product2.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product3.co.uk/etc where each product we resell is given it's own separate domain entirely. Does anyone think one direction over another would give any benefits in terms of SEO, or would it not matter as long as each site was well optimised with a solid content and social strategy? My initial preference is for the first option, if only because of the continuity in terms of having one main company website with each product listed in sub-domains. Each landing page would obviously be optimised for each specific product/keyword, etc. so, from a user point of view, there shouldn't be any confusion between separate products. Also, would it be recommended to install 301 redirects from our existing www.accounts-solutions.co.uk, etc pages to the relevant new sites? Thanks, John
Branding | | HBPGroup0 -
High Ranking site with very low amount of texts, HOW?
Hi All, As I was surfing the net, I recently encountered a beautiful and well known site - indochino.com An e-commerce site that sells custom made suits and shirts.
Branding | | BeytzNet
They do not have a brick and mortar store, just the site and built an amazing reputation in about two years (maybe less). The question is....
HOW do they rank high in competitive niches like suits with practically no texts in the website?
Is it "ONLY" because of the amazing UI and Links?
(I thought texts is the king...) There is no blog or any other visible content area besides for the product pages and a couple of explanatory sections which are also with not that much texts... Thanks!0 -
Anchor Text Profile Only Branded
So, I was looking at my backlink anchor text profile and easily over 90% of my links use some variation of my brand as the anchor text. This includes my full brand name, a shorter more common name and the naked url. My question is, is this bad for my ranking? I know having too many money words as anchors is not good, but what about having too many brand anchors?
Branding | | dsinger0 -
Are press releases still useful?
In light of so many Google changes are press releases with PRWeb or the like still worth using?
Branding | | uniquegifts-2778791 -
Use blog.domain.com or socialbrand.com?
I've got a little bit of a dilemma. A company I'm working for has an ecommerce site that is moving to Volusion. It is impossible to add "domain.com/blog" so I am forced to use a subdomain in order to keep consistency. We are starting a push in Social media and have secured shorter handles for the brand to use on the different networks. One of the main goals originally for developing a blog is to build trust but since the domain names are so big (26 characters) and the ecommerce sites already have a good amount of trust building factors in them I am beginning to question my original plan. My question is this: If I go with a shorter brand recognized domain name to develop the blog on which is different than the ecommerce domain (keyword matched) will I loose too much trust and ranking opportunity because of the difference in domains. I know there isn't a golden bullet for this question but i would love to get you your take on it.
Branding | | BenRWoodard0