Nofollow images to sculpt internal anchor tags
-
One of my client tags image-links with nofollow if those links are before a regular HTML link in the source code, e.g.:
.
.
.
Check our page aboutreally cool shoes.They do this to "better pass anchor tags" to the page /page-about-shoes.html.
My question: Is this a good practice to do?
Thanks
Sebes
-
Hi Sebes,
Good question. There's a lot of outdated information around the "only the first anchor text" count rules. In general, this is to believed true for text links. A couple years back a smart SEO specifically tested if the rule holds true when the first link is an image alt, and he found that the rule did not apply to images when the image was the first link. Unfortunately, this was quite awhile ago and I can no longer find the research.
To my knowledge, it's high time for another experiment in this area, so I wouldn't say for certain whether this rule is true today or not.
What I can say is that anchor text sculpting using the technique you described probably doesn't help much. In fact, by making the image link followed, you have the opportunity to vary your anchor text to your target page (if indeed Google does count both anchors when the first is an image).
Like I said, we need more experimentation. But I would wager your clients traffic and rankings will not drop if they make those links followed.
Keep us posted!
-
This "practices" does not work. There were several experiments published, that lead to this conclusion.
Google always takes the first alt / anchor text, no matter if it is nofollow / dofollow.
A workaround is to switch the positions in the source code. (first the textlink and than the imagelink). In most cases this is possible (css -> float) without changing the "optical" order on the page.
-
Sebes
Are you saying there's an image "alt" tag, but no src="something.jpg" ? That is a the darkest shade of gray if not completely black hat. I would definitely avoid it. This is a classic, simple, easy to detect case of over optimization, whatever else you may want to call it.
I would strongly suggest not to do it. We are in 2012. This might have worked in 1997 when Google was just born and it was primarily Dogpile.com and Altavista.com
Get them cleaned.
-
I really want to answer this question but I don't actually have any proof either way.
I am however fairly confident that it's total junk.
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 is the best tag to use for your Logo ?
Hi, I'm wondering what is the best tag to use on your logo. We're currently using h1 and i want to scrap that ASAP.
On-Page Optimization | | Alex.harvey.Cortex0 -
How does Google handle read more tags in Wordpress
Hi Everyone I am wondering how Google handles the read more tag in Wordpress. I pasted the link to a blog post on Google and found nothing (domain.com/post#readmore). Then I paste the version without #readmore (domain.com/post) and found that Google indexed the page but with the option to click "read more" to read it. The full blog post is not in their index, just the version asking you to read more. Is this because Google hasn't gotten to it or is Google ignoring it. I am not sure but ideally I rather have the full blog post indexed, not the read more version. I am curious to whether this will cause duplicate content issues. What are your experience with this and is it advisable to use an alternate method for read more. Maybe with a Wordpress plugin. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | gaben0 -
Rel-nofollow for price comparison site?
I run a price comparison site, so we have TONS of outbound links. Should my outbound links be marked with 'rel=nofollow'?
On-Page Optimization | | lancerpanz0 -
Title Tag duplication.
Hi Guys/Gals, We do a lot of work in a very competitive space (personal injury) and are having an internal debate on the best way to implement title tags for new sites. We understand that keywords, title tags, etc., don't possess the power they once did, but we have yet to see conclusive proof of this in our space. The vast majority of competitors still rank very well for keyword focused content, title tags, etc., while having average link profiles and little content. We write a lot of content for our clients and want to know if someone can offer their opinion on the question that follows this example: "Top 5 Injuries Caused by T-Bone Collisions | Indiana Accident Lawyer" Would it seem repetitive or manipulative to construct title tags as shown, always placing "Indiana Accident Attorney" or "Indianapolis Accident Lawyer," or similar of at the end of each title tag? Thanks, gang!
On-Page Optimization | | Wayne760 -
How can I nofollow my affiliate links?
I have a lot of affiliate links and I need to find an efficient way to nofollow them. I have over 500 blog posts and most have an affiliate link. I use Wordpress and Genesis. Any advice?
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
Alt image tags not being read by on-page optimization tool
Can bots see the keyword among other words in aIt image tags? For example, if the keyword is upholstery leather and the image tag says "our upholstery leather collection" will the keyword be recognized? Another example is buy leather. I have a image tag on a slide that reads "free samples before you buy leather" but an on-page analysis in moz does not show an alt tag title for buy leather? Same problem with an moz on-page analysis of the term upholstery leather. Thanks! Hunter
On-Page Optimization | | leatherhidestore0 -
The Value of Internal Links?
I have seen countless SEO "experts" suggest internal links are great to help the search engines find your content. I wonder if that is true any more. It seems like a sitemap would do a better job. I think tags may even hurt the content I want to Google to know as most important. I'm using Simple Tags on all of my WP sites. If it "sees" a word in the article that is also a tag it adds a link for that tag to a listing of all the articles with that tag. It only does this once per tag though. Going on the experts advice, I thought this was a good idea. But now, I'm thinking these tags reduce the value of links to my eBook or other content i want to feature. Which doesn't get tagged much since I don't promote it all that often on my site within content. I make it nearly impossible to miss it on the site though. 🙂 What I do see the tags doing is helping users find the content. So I do see it improving the bounce rate and giving uses an assist in finding more content about what they are looking for. I have tags marked as noindex follow. But I'm really considering now removing the links. I hate plugins anyway. 🙂 Seems I'm always finding another must have plugin though. Now I'm thinking I'd be better off to just add links manually into the content that I really want to feature. All these automatic links I'm generating can't be good. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | RustyF0 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0