Retaining Image Search Rankings After Migration
-
Hi There,
I have a client with a very interesting dilemma out there. If you do an image search his images appear quite high in the rankings. However the way he achieved this isn't exactly within Google's guidelines. He is basically hiding the images within CSS. The reason behind this is that the pages have changed over the years and the images didn't fit in with the new existing text but he still wanted to maintain the high image search rankings.
He is now changing to a brand new site and so this page he has been able to tweak successfully before, will no longer exist. He want's to know what is the best way to maintain his image search rankings. will a 301 redirect be enough?
I know the morality issues of hiding images, but I want to know if he did what would be the best way to preserve his current image rankings.
Kind Regards
Neil
-
Does he benefit from the images ranking so highly? I haven't seen many studies where image clicks result in good traffic, especially in terms of revenue if it's an e-commerce site.
It seems a strange way of doing things. Are you saying the images don't match the text content of the page? The context an image is placed in can help it rank, so it seems strange that these images are ranking based on their historical context. Google reads CSS so should see that the images are hidden. Unless you're blocking Google from seeing the CSS which is now against Google's Webmaster Guidelines: https://plus.google.com/+PierreFar/posts/TLeHSDRwjhB
If you're not blocking Google from the CSS, all other things being equal, then 301 redirects of the page and images could be enough, though I wouldn't be surprised if the rankings drop as from the information you've given (and assuming they're relatively competitive keywords) I'm surprised the rankings have remained for so long! The best way to preserve the image rankings would be to have the images on a page with relevant content.
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
-
What would cause a major drop in ranking for (images) on both desk top and mobile? Web rankings are holding OK?
Sometime between Nov 8th and Nov 11th are rankings on Google for images dropped substantially. Our web rankings are holding OK. any idea!
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture0 -
A new client has image urls showing above their page rankings for the same key phrase.
New client website https://yorkshirefoodguide.co.uk/ has for some key phrase searches the URL for an image showing above or as well as the url for the landing page. I'd be happy for it to show in the image pack but I want to url to rank in the main serp. The site is in WordPress and I'm sure this is just a setting I need to manage. Can you help please?
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Optimist0 -
Desktop Ranking Disappeared After URL Change; Mobile Ranking Improved
A client's developer moved a site onto a new (WordPress) CMS, where the only change was URLs - the front end code stayed the same. The site is 10+ years old and previously had fantastic rankings (#1-4) with inner pages for some relatively generic search phrases (eg 10,000 searches / month in the UK, per Keyword Planner). Now, on Desktop searches the site isn't appearing anywhere in the 300+ results for a key search phrase, where it used to rank between #2-4; however over the last 3 weeks on Mobile the site ranks better than before, even though the site isn't at all mobile-friendly (it's over 10 years old). During the move, there were some errors by their developer: mistakenly left in a sitewide rel=canonical tag referring to the homepage 3-4 301s before finally reaching new URLs a lot of 301s missed (250+ crawl errors appeared in Search Console) page content differentiation by parameter, instead of individual URLs For example, the page that used to rank for the targeted phrase, this left 4 different URLs indexed, with the same content. To tackle this, we have so far: put in correct rel=canonical tags set up Search Console to recognise URL parameter as differentiating content fixed all crawl errors appearing in Search Console added a link direct to the problem page, direct from the homepage stopped duplicate content being indexed (including for the page in question) ensured the page load speed is still good (< 0.75s) Ranking for Desktop over Mobile would make sense, but not Mobile over Desktop! I'd really appreciate any advice on how to tackle this. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | magicdust0 -
Unexpected Rank Down After Page Update
Hello Team, I have a post on my blog which was ranking on #1 in SERP. I always tried to update it with new content.On 31-Mar-2017, I made a big update in it. Like, it was a list of 20 tips and I made it to 50+. I thought it will help me to increase it's CTR. And, I changed its URL and redirect old one to new one.But when I checked today, it was totally disappeared from SERP 😞 it's nowhere. But it is indexed I have checked but not ranking now. I did this thing (Content Upgrade) before and it always gave good results but I don't know what happened now.Any suggestions or help?Old URL: http://excelchamps.com/blog/2015/12/21-useful-macro-codes-for-vba-newcomers/New URL: http://excelchamps.com/blog/2017/03/useful-macro-codes-for-vba-newcomers/-With love and respect,Puneet Gogia
Technical SEO | | ManAPR0 -
Rankings Bouncing Weekly
I have a client who ranks well for a number of keywords. This week we have about 20 keywords in the top ten on Google that we're tracking. But every week it seems, the keywords bounce around quite a bit. This week, for example, we had at least 15 keywords out of the ~90 we're tracking jump between 30 to 40 spots. The most any keywords increased was 43, a few 42s and 41s, in one week. Next week, they'll go down a few, then bounce up again just like this. This has been happening for a while. I'm trying to figure out what the issue is.
Technical SEO | | Millermore0 -
WP image pages
I used Dreamweaver for years but have recently been switching to Wordpress. On the whole the results have been very positive. However, I don't like the way that WP generates a page for images when the image is inserted into a blog post. I was just reading this http://www.eyeflow.com/content-strength-audit/ excellent article on Content Strength Audit and it referred to this problem as well. Often, when I insert an image into a blog, I delete the reference to the image page and link directly to the image. Is this an effective way to deal with the is problem? Is there a better approach? Best,
Technical SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Mirrored content/ images
We are currently in the process of creating a new website in place of our old site (same URL etc.) We've recently created another website which has the same design/ layout/ pictures and general site architecture as our new site will have. If I was to add alt test to images only on one site would we still be penalised by Google as the sites 'look' the same, event thought they will have completely different URL's and different focusses on a similar topic. Content will be different also, but both sites will focus on a similar subject. Thanks
Technical SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Ranking with a .nu TLD
Hi everyone, A few weeks ago i purchased a .nu TLD, it's a really nice domainname but i'm wondering if it's possible to rank with this domain in Google? I've heard several times that it doesn't matter for Google which TLD a site has, but i normally never see .nu's high in the SERP's, what are your opinions about this? Is it possible for me to get this site high in google with good links and quality content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | iwebdevnl0