ALT Tag Labels that Use Near Duplicate Text-SEO No, No???
-
Greetings Moz Community:
About 280 pages of my 650 page commercial real estate website are listing pages. Each listing page contains between two and five photos, each with a corresponding ALT tag.
My developer has set up the labeling of the ALT tags in the following manner. I can create a label for the first photo, but each subsequent photo automatically gets the same label plus a number tagged to the ALT. Like this:
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 0"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 1"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 2"
alt="Flatiron Loft for Rent - Photo 3"Is this method neutral, positive or negative for SEO? I am concerned that this manner of labeling ALT tags might risk triggering a duplicate content penalty. In early July I migrated the site from Drupal to Wordpress. We changed the URL structure (adding a sub-directory) for the listings at that time. Google is refusing to index about 100 listing pages. Any chance the ALT tags are contributing to Google's reluctance to index the URLs?
I might also add that images are hosted on Amazon's CDN.
A sample listing URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/278-21st-street-flatiron-loft-for-rent
Note: (/listings/278) were added to the URL in July, representing the listing sub directory plus the listing number.I Look forward to hearing the opinion of the MOZ community!!!
THANKS!!!
Alan -
Could you give the main/featured image a custom alt attribute, and let the rest share a format like you show above? So like this:
alt="Blue Cotton Tee by Billabong"
alt="Alternate Billabong Tee Image 002"
alt="Alternate Billabong Tee Image 003"
alt="Alternate Billabong Tee Image 004"
alt="Alternate Billabong Tee Image 005"I would not leave the rest without an alt attribute.
-
Hi,
I know this post is a bit old, but just got into a similar situation.
I have series of product images (on an eCommerce website), that are all showing the same product in different ways.
In this case, the real description would be like:alt="Clothing Load 001"
alt="Clothing Load 002"
alt="Clothing Load 003"
alt="Clothing Load 004"
alt="Clothing Load 005"But, since this might be considered keyword stuffing according to the posts above...
Would it be better to just give an ALT tag to the first image, leaving the rest without an alt tag?
Looking for similar keywords looks time-consuming since each product might have 50 images.Thank you,
-
On the sample page you provided it would be much better to label the photos with alt attributes like this:
Main image:Flatiron Loft for Rent
Hallway View for Listing #278
Window Views of City for Listing #278
Etc...The point being to describe what the image is instead of worrying about what keywords to use.
What you're doing now probably wasn't the cause of a major traffic drop, but it probably isn't helping much either and there is a possibility that it could be seen as keyword stuffing.
-
I doubt the duplicate content penalty from this but yes this is not a healthy practice as you are trying to stuff the keywords by adding one alt tag on all images on that page.
Ideally your system should have the ability to denote Alt tags to all images separately so that you can change the Alt image tag for each image when it is required!
Hope this helps!
-
It's not duplicate content it may however, be considered as keyword stuffing. Mix it up. _Loungeroom of Loft for Rent _etc.
Did you set up 301 redirects for your old pages/urls ? Check GWT for broken links and resubmit a sitemap.
-
I think that is not good for seo as it can over optimize word Flatiron Loft for Rent. If you have problems of time to alt all fotos it correspondent description i you will give the same name to all of them i would just label one with keyword and the other a would just use a name that you dont want to get the risk of being penalized for.
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
-
If I use content from DomainA on DomainB, but spread it - how do I implement the canoncial tag?
Hey community, I have a question regarding canonical tags.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ElliPirelli
I used the content of one of my domains (nameA.com/ContentA) and copied it to another domain, but on several pages: nameB.com/ContentA1
nameB.com/ContentA2
nameB.com/ContentA3
and so on). So I divided the content from domainA to several pages of domainB. The reason is, that my client wants to build a new business on domainB and wants to use the exact same content from domainA, because he can't afford another copywriter at the moment (and he doesn't want to rewrite it himself). Problem: DomainA is ranking for this content and he wants to keep the rankings, until domainB ranks similar (for the same keywords, of course). So my question is: Can I put a canonical tag on domainA?
My thoughts are: Not a single page of domainB is 100% duplicate content, as it's always only partialy the same. Can I just choose one of those pages from domainB to put as link-goal for the canonical tag? Or do I need to create a "view-all" page on domainB, with all the content put together, so it's 100% duplicate to domainA, and then put a canonical tag to domainA and link to this "view-all" page? If I do so, do I need to also put canonicals on every single page from domainB, to link to this "view-all" page?
IMPORTANT: Would the other pages of domainB then be ranked/listed in the SERRPs, or only the "view-all" site? I would really appreciate your help, as I have been seaching for answers to this specific problem since more than a week... Thank you! Best regards0 -
Should I delete all tags and just use my categories to organize content?
My website NorthernCaliforniaHikingTrails.com/blog has 400 or so tags, and it also has an extensive set of categories. I'm thinking about deleting all the tags, but keeping the categories and consolidating them a bit. Is there a significant SEO advantage to having tags in my case? I've seen a few very high-ranking websites actually rank for a tag, but I doubt my site will reach that level. Any help appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | John88990 -
Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!
I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results. I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text. Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers). For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description. A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this: Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg .... 002, 003 etc Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post. Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image. So my question is - is this right? The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect: https://moz.com/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search "Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image." This is not the case. Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Original Source Tag or Canonical Tag for News Publishers?
I have been sourcing content from a news publisher who is my partner for publishing content online. My website deals with sourcing content from a couple of websites. I did use a canonical tag pointing towards the respective syndicated source but I have not seen traffic for those articles. I did some research and found out that Google does have a tag for news publishers which is the "original-source" tag which helps news publishers to give proper credit for their work. Here's a link to the official word by Google" https://news.googleblog.com/2010/11/credit-where-credit-is-due.html Although Google has officially stated that the "syndication-source" tag has been replaced by the "canonical" tag. However, there is no mention about the "original-source" tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Starcom_Search
Can I still use the "original-source" tag to syndicate content from my partner site instead of the "canonical" tag? P.S.: The reason why I am not convinced with the use of the canonical tag is because:
1. As per what Google says, duplicate content won't harm my website unless it is spam. (And since we are rightfully content from our partner'website and showcasing it to a larger audience by hosting it on our website as well, we are thereby not indulging in any unethical practices) 2. The canonical tag could possibly hamper my crawl bandwidth issues as it would essentially need the crawler to crawl the whole page to figure out that the canonical is present, post which any possible valuation that my site could have garnered gets lost.3. Moreover, since I am from the news, media and publication industry, content republication is a widely accepted practice and in such cases simply including a link to the original source of the article or using the original source tag should suffice, That being mentioned, I do not want to go ahead without taking a second opinion about this. Kindly help me to resolve this issue.0 -
Penalties for duplicate content
Hello!We have a website with various city tours and activities listed on a single page (http://vaiduokliai.lt/). The list changes accordingly depending on filtering (birthday in Vilnius, bachelor party in Kaunas, etc.). The URL doesn't change. Content changes dynamically. We need to make URL visible for each category, then optimize it for different keywords (for example city tours in Vilnius for a list of tours and activities in Vilnius with appropriate URL /tours-in-Vilnius).The problem is that activities overlap very often in different categories, so there will be a lot of duplicate content on different pages. In such case, how severe penalty could be for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpuzakov0 -
Can I Use Multiple rel="alternate" Tags on Multiple Domains With the Same Language?
Hoping someone can answer this for me, as I have spent a ton of time researching with no luck... Is there anything misleading/wrong with using multiple rel="alternate" tags on a single webpage to reference multiple alternate versions? We currently use this tag to specify a mobile-equivalent page (mobile site served on an m. domain), but would like to expand so that we can cover another domain for desktop (possibly mobile in the future). In essence: MAIN DOMAIN would get The "Other Domain" would then use Canonical to point back to the main site. To clarify, this implementation idea is for an e-commerce site that maintains the same product line across 2 domains. One is homogeneous with furniture & home decor, which is a sub-set of products on our "main" domain that includes lighting, furniture & home decor. Any feedback or guidance is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LampsPlus0 -
What constitutes duplicate content?
I have a website that lists various events. There is one particular event at a local swimming pool that occurs every few months -- for example, once in December 2011 and again in March 2012. It will probably happen again sometime in the future too. Each event has its own 'event' page, which includes a description of the event and other details. In the example above the only thing that changes is the date of the event, which is in an H2 tag. I'm getting this as an error in SEO Moz Pro as duplicate content. I could combine these pages, since the vast majority of the content is duplicate, but this will be a lot of work. Any suggestions on a strategy for handling this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChatterBlock0 -
Image Links Vs. Text Links, Questions About PR & Anchor Text Value
I am searching for testing results to find out the value of text links versus image links with alt text. Do any of you have testing results that can answer or discuss these questions? If 2 separate pages on the same domain were to have the same Page Authority, same amount of internal and external links and virtually carry the same strength and the location of the image or text link is in the same spot on both pages, in the middle of the body within paragraphs. Would an image link with alt text pass the same amount of Page Authority and PR as a text link? Would an image link with alt text pass the same amount of textual value as a text link? For example, if the alt text on the image on one page said "nike shoes" and the text link on the other page said "nike shoes" would both pass the same value to drive up the rankings of the page for "nike shoes"? Would a link wrapped around an image and text phrase be better than creating 2 links, one around the image and one around the text pointing to the same page? The following questions have to do with when you have an image and text link on a page right next to each other, like when you link a compelling graphic image to a category page and then list a text link underneath it to pass text link value to the linked-to page. If the image link displays before the text link pointing to a page, would first link priority use the alt text and not even apply the anchor text phrase to the linked page? Would it be best to link the image and text phrase together pointing to the product page to decrease the link count on the page, thus allowing for more page rank and page authority to pass to other pages that are being linked to on the page? And would this also pass anchor text value to the link-to page since the link would include an image and text? I know that the questions sound a bit repetitive, so please let me know if you need any further clarification. I'd like to solve these to further look into ways to improve some user experience aspects while optimizing the link strength on each page at the same time. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernhardt
Andrew0