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.
Alt Tags on multiple product images
-
Hi
I work on SEO for an ecommerce site and wanted to find out how important it is to optimise all images with alt tags.
We have alt tags in place, however have not optimised descriptions for the following example images:
Front of cupboard
Back of cupboard
Side of cupboard etc
Is this dangerous for SEO if these images all have the same alt tag?
We have thousands of products so it would be a huge job to update these, but if it's crucial for SEO we can work through our priorities.
Thank you!
-
Yes I was thinking of testing this.
I have just checked our images and from what I can see the devs have set the alt tag to default to the product title.
Then the image title is a bit more descriptive - does the image title/legend help with anything or should we ignore these and update alt tags instead?
-
Sorry Becky, I forgot to say that without some level of testing, it is almost impossible to say with any degree of certainty just what you would get from this as a site-wide task. Depending on the products, searches conducted and how Google ranks the images, you may find a good deal of additional traffic or you may find very little.
Perhaps take a control group to test and monitor the products over the course of a month to see if sales / traffic has increased.
-Andy
-
Do you still not need to optimise each different image?
-
Thank you this is really helpful!
-
Great thank you very much for your help!
-
Hi Becky,
You aren't likely to be penalised for this, but the benefit you can derive from ALT text will be lessened. If the picture is of a floor fan, and the ALT tag says this, there is no problem.
However, I would be saying something like "Metal Blizzard Floor Fan 12" 55W with tilt". It will help because you have more of a chance of it turning up in image searches = more traffic.
-Andy
-
Definitely a great idea is there is a dev on hand to do this
-Andy
-
Hi Becky,
Completely agreed with Andy's suggestion.I would like to add one more thing here I'm also working on a large e-commerce site with thousands of products. I find a good way to insert alt tag very easily I asked web developer to create a module by which every products having alt tag with product name and web developer did a great job by writing only few lines of code. you can ask web developer to do the same.
Now I don't need to add alt tag individually on each product and it saves my time.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
Hi Andy
That's great thank you. I'm finding it harder to describe some products, which have very similar images. Say for instance, a fan at different angles.
Will I get penalised if Alt tags have the same name? So if say 3 images all have, floor fan? This is happening as a default at the moment, but I am looking into getting them updated - however if the benefit is small other tasks will be prioritised.
Thank you
-
Hi Becky,
What you need to be careful of, is over optimising with ALT tags. This can lead to issues, but what you suggest is correct. John Mueller from Google had this to say about ALT tags...
"alt attribute should be used to describe the image. So if you have an image of a big blue pineapple chair you should use the alt tag that best describes it, which is alt=”big blue pineapple chair.”** title attribute** should be used when the image is a hyperlink to a specific page. The title attribute should contain information about what will happen when you click on the image. For example, if the image will get larger, it should read something like, title=”View a larger version of the big blue pineapple chair image.”
If the image someone can click on is the rear view of a cupboard, then say this in the ALT tag. However, it is worthwhile remembering that you need to be descriptive with these.
Here is a great article on the subject.
-Andy
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
-
Can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type im trying to rank for?
Hello, if I am trying to rank for a service type and the exact phrase is in the companies name, can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type? Seizing the opportunity to get another mention of the businesses name...two birds with the one stone if you will... For example, "lawn cutting" being the service type but the company's name is Paul's lawn cutting. Could i put Pauls Lawn Cutting in the image alt text, or just stick to lawn cutting? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Gavinn0 -
Do Blog Tags affect SEO at all anymore?
We're trying to standardize the use of tags on our site amongst writers/editors, and I'm trying to come up a list of tags they can choose from to tag posts with - and telling them to use no more than 10 (absolute maximum) per post. We are also in the process of migrating to a new CMS, and have 8 defined categories that will all have their own landing page within our "News" section. TLDR: Do blog tags have any impact on SEO anymore? Are they solely meant to help users find articles related on popular topics, or does creating a tag for a popular topic help to improve organic visibility? Full Question: With the tag standardization, I want to make sure we're creating the most useful and effective tags; and the UX/SEO sides of my brain are conflicted. To my understanding, creating a tag about a high volume topic in an industry helps establish the website's relevance to Google/other search engines about that topic and improves overall relevance; but the tag feed page (ex: http://freshome.com/tag/home-protection/) isn't really meant for organic search visibility. So my other question is, is it worth it to noindex the tag pages in the robots.txt? Will that affect any benefit to increased relevance for Google (if there is any)? I'm interested to hear others' thoughts and suggestions. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | davidkaralisjr0 -
Background Images and ALT text
We pretty much exclusively use background images for our sites. How do I add in alt text? I tried a Google search for this issue and the best answer I could find was "Use the 'title' tag in the containing div", but that was from 2010. Is there a better way to do it? And no, we're not going to switch to using standard images, because background images are way more slick for UX.
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelGregory0 -
Duplicate page titles and hreflang tags
Moz is flagging a lot of pages on our site which have duplicate page titles. 99% of these are international pages which hreflang tags in the sitemap. Do I need to worry about this? I assumed that it wasn't an issue given the use of hreflang. And if that's the case, why is Moz flagging them as an issue? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | ahyde0 -
Does Title Tag have to be in the HEAD tag?
We are using templates that load the same header for every page. I'd like to just include a different title tag in the "body" template of each page. If I was to do this, does it affect SEO at all?
On-Page Optimization | | moziodavid0 -
Alt Text On Buy Buttons
Hello, On a E-commerce site with multiple buy buttons on the page (11 by Default). Should I be blocking the alt. img on these? when I use the seomoz toolbar and view my page I see this Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • along with other alt imges on page, Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Do alt tags count towards on page keyword density?
Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?
I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?
On-Page Optimization | | Amosnet0