undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. On-Page Optimization
  4. Should I watermark my product images

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Should I watermark my product images

On-Page Optimization
9
13
11.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • BipSum
    BipSum last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 12:51 PM

    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.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
    • BipSum
      BipSum last edited by Oct 11, 2013, 7:02 AM Oct 11, 2013, 7:02 AM

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • vmialik
        vmialik last edited by Oct 11, 2013, 7:02 AM Oct 10, 2013, 7:56 PM

        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!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Sharla
          Sharla last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 3:39 PM Oct 10, 2013, 3:35 PM

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • AWCthreads
            AWCthreads @EGOL last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 2:21 PM Oct 10, 2013, 2:21 PM

            Does the mark say, "EGOL?"

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • EGOL
              EGOL @BipSum last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 2:19 PM Oct 10, 2013, 2:19 PM

              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.

              AWCthreads 1 Reply Last reply Oct 10, 2013, 2:21 PM Reply Quote 0
              • Oren.
                Oren. last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:35 PM Oct 10, 2013, 1:35 PM

                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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • AWCthreads
                  AWCthreads @BipSum last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:42 PM Oct 10, 2013, 1:33 PM

                  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.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • gazzerman1
                    gazzerman1 @BipSum last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:22 PM Oct 10, 2013, 1:22 PM

                    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.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • shendison
                      shendison last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:19 PM Oct 10, 2013, 1:19 PM

                      Do it - For me it adds credibility when a company watermarks their images unobtrusively, and G loves credibility...

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • BipSum
                        BipSum last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:12 PM Oct 10, 2013, 1:12 PM

                        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.

                        gazzerman1 AWCthreads EGOL 3 Replies Last reply Oct 10, 2013, 2:19 PM Reply Quote 2
                        • SErOb
                          SErOb last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:11 PM Oct 10, 2013, 1:11 PM

                          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.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                          • AWCthreads
                            AWCthreads last edited by Oct 10, 2013, 1:00 PM Oct 10, 2013, 12:58 PM

                            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.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                            • 1 / 1
                            1 out of 13
                            • First post
                              1/13
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • Dreamrealemedia

                              How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?

                              Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!

                              On-Page Optimization | Jun 29, 2017, 10:30 AM | Dreamrealemedia
                              0
                            • bbuildingbusiness

                              Yoast SEO doesn't recognize images

                              Hi, I'm currently adding alt tags to my images but the Yoast SEO plug in in Wordpress states on all my pages “No images appear in this page, consider adding some as appropriate.“ while I do have images on my pages. What could be the problem? Best, Rik

                              On-Page Optimization | Jan 12, 2017, 7:20 AM | bbuildingbusiness
                              0
                            • ATP

                              Getting the Titles and Headings Right on Product Pages. Userbility vs SEO

                              Hey Mozzers, I am optimising a chaotic section of the site including many similar products. Writing unique content etc. The titles and urls were all over the place so my first job was to tidy them up so I could make some sense of the situation, especially as sometimes they didn't even match! I should point out were on Magento, so product name = Both the Heading and Title of the page, the meta title can be set separately. When i refer to title I mean both <title>and <h1></strong><br /><br />Before they existed as such<br />URL:  domain.com/200-x-0-5-g-rs-232-balance.html<br />TItle:   PC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br /><br />This format was (Product Code, Capacities, Resolutions, Accuracy, Product Title)<br /><br />The issue was all 60 products in a page followed this format. Navigating through the page was a nightmare and was just a jumble of numbers and highly confusing even to me who learnt what they all mean, especially when you had 8 products from the same range you got presented with<br /><br />APC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1235 500 x 1g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1236 1000 x 2g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1238 5000 x 10g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1239 10000 x 15g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1210 20000 x 25g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1211 50000 x 50g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance</p> <p>I changed them to something more user friendly.<br /><br />URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />This has seen the following benefits<br />- URL is now clear and means something to the user<br />- Product titles are easy to navigate and the page is more pleasing to the eye<br />- The jumble of numbers in the title are now all labelled and shown below each product listing in bullet point so the user can see the basic spec of a product without having to decipher any titles<br /><br />Upon reflection I has a couple of concerns I was hoping you could discuss, I am wondering if I have made the titles too simple.<br />1) I have no product code in the title<br />We have our own products manufactured and sell existing brands with their own product codes. Some of these can be lengthy. Adding them makes them hard to the eye and the page looked cramped.<br /><br />The codes are listed beneath each product title on category pages and on a list on the actual product page, but no where in the titles. <br /><br />2)None of our products have a brand listed in the title<br />None of the products on the site had brand names in anything but the images when i started and as such it snuck under my radar. But should i pre-fix all titles with a brand name?<br /><br />Should </p> <p>URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance</p> <p>become</p> <p>URL: domain.com/BRAND1-200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: BRAND1 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />My instinct tells me to change things to include brands as its useful to the customer and should have an SEO benefit, but to leave out product codes as they are accessible to the customer where they are now and dont make things messy and unreadable.<br /><br />As always, thanks for the input!</p></title>

                              On-Page Optimization | Feb 19, 2016, 6:32 AM | ATP
                              0
                            • Gavin.Atkinson

                              Can lazy loading of images affect indexing?

                              I am trying to diagnose a massive drop in Google rankings for my website and noticed that the date of the ranking and traffic drop coincides with Google suddenly only indexing about 10% of my images, whereas previously it was indexing about 95% of them. Wondering if addition of lazy load script to images (so they don't load from the server until visible in the browser) could cause this index blocking?

                              On-Page Optimization | Sep 23, 2016, 4:58 AM | Gavin.Atkinson
                              1
                            • speedbird1229

                              NOINDEX, FOLLOW on product page - how about images indexing?

                              Hi, Since we have a lot of similar products with duplicate descriptions, I decided to NOINDEX, FOLLOW most of these different variants which have duplicate content. However, I guess it would be useful in marketing terms if Google image search still listed the images of the products in image search. How does the image search of Google actually work - does it read the NOINDEX on the product page and therefore skip the image also or is the image search completely dependent on the ALT tag of any image found on our site? Thanks!

                              On-Page Optimization | Jan 22, 2015, 3:23 PM | speedbird1229
                              0
                            • onwardsandupwards

                              How often should we refresh or rewrite product descriptions?

                              is it good practice to rewrite our product descriptions every few months? Thanks

                              On-Page Optimization | Mar 5, 2014, 1:32 PM | onwardsandupwards
                              0
                            • DavidLenehan

                              Should I add PDF manuals to my product pages?

                              Hello. A lot of the products I sell on my e-commerce site are very technical. I decided to add PDF data sheets, manuals etc on each of the product pages to improve the customer experience. Now I am not sure if it was the best thing to do.  I have noticed a couple of times that the PDF is out ranking the product page in the SERP.  For a few products, the PDF ranks but the product page doesn't.  Anyone got any ideas?

                              On-Page Optimization | Oct 24, 2013, 5:46 PM | DavidLenehan
                              0
                            • Sparkstone

                              Different page for each product colour?

                              Hi Guys, I've just read an ecommerce article that suggests it's a good idea to have a different page for each colour that the product comes in. However surely this will mean duplicate content? What are your thoughts? Have you put this tactic into motion and how did it go? Thanks, Dan

                              On-Page Optimization | Oct 5, 2012, 12:44 PM | Sparkstone
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.