Should I watermark my product images
-
I am in the process of creating new images for my products to use on my website. Are there any advantages or disadvantages of watermarking each image? Is there an SEO impact good or bad? I am aware that filename and Alt tags are important, but am unsure if google dislikes watermarked images.
-
Hi all, thanks for your comments. Looks like it wouldn't do any harm if I had a small brand logo placed on each image. Will have a think and probably just go for it.
Thanks.
-
Time might come, and might be around the corner when, images in Google Search will be OCR'd (scanned for text/wording and made searchable) this will result in your watermarks if its in Copyright Joe Smith (text form) will be searchable.
Also thing about this if you are using image search with an image of your brand, (not sure about practically but theoretically) you should be able to find all your images if they are watermarked with your Brand image in Google image search.
So if you are planning to future proof your images for image SEO go for it!
-
Are you selling your own manufactured goods or reselling someone elses? If you're reselling someone elses, don't they have images of their products already to use? I think it's rare for a reseller to take all their own product images, but if you do because you feel it gives you an edge, I would use your own logo prominently rather than as a watermark. Maybe you have an artistic presentation of goods that needs proprietary protection - that is the only case I can see for potential watermarking.
And, if you're selling your own goods, do you also sell them to others for resale? I frequently need product photos from manufacturers for promotion by authorized sellers of their brands.
Different companies have different ways they let marketing depts retrieve images, and from my side, the easier it is, the better. I've never seen anyone put watermarks on their images, but some create their sites so you have to go through a lengthy registration process and wait to hear back - huge pain in the kisser for me as I have to go to the client, they have to find the account, get it back to me, I enter it, oops, website says not that string of numbers, go back... etc. Time suck warp.
Some companies make their images non-downloadable (though there are some workarounds and screen shots). The ones I like best - just let me have the images, no mess, no fuss. I am after all trying to sell their products.
Then, I brand a corner with the resellers logo, but not as a watermark; rather it's a notice that yes, this company carries this merchandise. And for SEO, if the reseller branded image of the original product comes up in image search (which they do sometimes as I always fully tag out my images), then all the better. If you're selling your own goods with no authorized resellers, I think I would brand a corner also - no watermark, just a logo, but only if for some reason your logo is not already on the products.
-
Does the mark say, "EGOL?"
-
I do the bottom left or right... Weasels still steal it. Some publish with my copyright mark, some paint it out, some put a textbox over my mark.
-
Lots of good points already. I find that small logo in a corner is helpful because even if the image is stolen, saved to a computer, reused, posted on facebook without context, whatever -- your brand is still prominently displayed.
-
There may be some value in branding in that regard depending on what you're selling.
However, If its small and unobtrosive then the viewer probably wouldn't be able to tell what the logo is/says until they open the image.
Edit add - when its that small its easily removed and cropped so it really becomes a matter of whether you think its important as a branding element versus protection.
-
Watermarking can have an advantage in Google images. If you have lots of images your brand will show up often and people will get to know it, without ever having visited your site.
-
Do it - For me it adds credibility when a company watermarks their images unobtrusively, and G loves credibility...
-
Thanks for your feedback. I was thinking about a small brand logo bottom right or left of each image. Nothing instrusive. For the feeds it would be clean images.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
-
I agree w/ AWC.
If you do watermark, just make sure it's not the least bit distracting.
One ecomm site I work with has over 10,000 original product images. They were constantly being stolen, which is annoying considering the effort that goes into the production of the images. Once they were watermarked (via the ecomm platform), the poaching pretty much stopped.
-
A watermark won't affect your rank.
In my opinion this is more a matter of the use of your time.
I very rarely see watermarks anymore on ecommerce sites. I think a watermark will do more to pollute the appearance of your product than protect your images from piracy.
From a practical perspective, Google and other shopping feeds may have rules regarding watermarks and artwork associated with products so make sure you are aware of the rules if you use feeds.
Edit add - I can recall 1 ecommerce site I've visited using watermarks and the only other places I see it are sites that sell images and artwork.
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
-
Product Description Blurb on Category Page
Hey Everyone, Working with a client who currently has category pages that contain its respective product's description (or about 30 words from it) in each of their product blocks on that category page. We are currently playing with the idea of switching it down to just being the product title and image. We think this will be much more aesthetically pleasing, but aren't sure if it will effect our SEO either negatively or positively. A couple of things to note: The category pages have a description (many of them still need work, but they are unique). The product's description inside the product block is duplicate content of the first 30 or so words on the product page. If you have 30 products on the page, you end up with a page that contains about 900 words + the unique description at the top of the page. Will dropping those 900 words hurt our SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | frankandmaven0 -
404's Wordpress products
Hi Guy's, On a Wordpress website we have a SEO Ultimate plugin running. Every day i get lot's of 404 errors of products that doesn't exist anymore (but are indexed, site: .... ). In the beginning we had lot's of testproduct that are not coming back in the shop. So i was wondering if there is a way to automaticly redirect product when there are out of stock, or not comming back anymore... So my 404's can be fixed. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Happy-SEO1 -
Ideal product descriptions. What instructions to give to copywriter?
I plan to hire a copywriter to write high quality unique product descriptions for luxury products in one of our ecommerce sites. Apart from being well written and unique, any suggestions on what specifications to give to copywriter?
On-Page Optimization | | lcourse
E.g. length of text per product, obviously no keyword stuffing, but any instructions regarding keywords? Any good posts or specifications you can refer me to on the topic? thanks0 -
Setting Up Title Tags for Multipe Locations and Products
Hi There! So we operate a small offset postcard printing company in Houston. While we are based out of Houston, we market and work with a lot the larger cities around us. So for example Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio are nice sized markets for us. So my question is if i whats the most effective way to structure the title data to market to those areas. Lets take 4 X 6 Postcards at the moment the website loos like Austin 4 X 6 Postcard Printing, Full Color Postcard Prints - nameofcompany.com Each page will have unique content for lets say from the Dallas 4 X 6 Postcard page
On-Page Optimization | | ChopperCharlie0 -
Flickr v. On-Site Images
My apologies in that I have searched for this, have seen discussions on it and haven't seen a definitive answer on the question of hosting & displaying on-domain images v. using a source like flickr to host all of your images. I have a client that is mostly a local search play in a very tourism heavy area. I'm investigating this option for a few reasons. 1. Ease of use. The new flickr app is brilliant. So if he's out giving a tour, takes a picture, it can be seamlessly integrated to his account & then shot off to all of his portals (website, facebook, twitter, etc.). It's a small client & he's not tech savvy, so this option suits him very well. 2. SEO. With all of the tagging, geo components, and it playing nice with Google Images search, I thought this was a viable option in hosting the majority of his on-site images. I've seen opinions on this before. But I was wondering if there any further opinions on the subject. Not sure if there's anything 'definitive', but any help or insight would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | BrianWhitaker0 -
How does Google view frequent changes to the copy of an ecommerce product page?
Is there any reason to think that adding to or improving copy might harm seo?
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
Best Way To Host Images For Image Optimization
I need an image optimization expert to tell me whether or not we are hosting images properly for SEO. Currently, we upload all images to Picasa and then call them out with a webpart in our content management system. See example here - http://www.tennisnow.com/Photos/2011-BNP-Paribas-Open-Day-5.aspx Here's an example of the url that is attached to each image - http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1Oyc-Zgkrpk/TX5H-Pfyd7I/AAAAAAAARbc/nG3Cw-G5tsY/s400/1215548409_FU9xA-L.jpg We have a lot of images, and we've hosted them on Picasa for speed purposes based on a recommendation from our developer (makes the pages load faster). I've read that Google can now factor page load time into its ranking parameters. We are not seeing the images from each photo gallery being indexed on images.google.com. We are torn. What should we do to rank for these images?
On-Page Optimization | | tennisexpress0 -
Image files names - should each be different ?
Hi SEOs I have created a page on my website with a certain tutorial - let's say "How to change a tyre in your car". I have Grade A from On-page report using SEOmoz tool. I have put a relevant alt description for each photo I have put in that tutorial and I have used relevant keyword as a name for each image. So for example this would look like that: changing-tyre-1.jpg changing-tyre-2.jpg My question is should I name these file differently according to their content ? For example if on my photo there is some tool I have to use to change the tyre should the file have the name relevant to the subject of the article/tutorial on the page or to the content of the image ? Is that a stupid question ? Or am I getting too fussy ? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | lolskizz0