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
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • 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.

      • 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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Image Maps

    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.

    Image Maps

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    5
    2989
    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.
    • corwin
      corwin last edited by

      Hey forum,

      I'm curious about Image Maps. Few things I'm not sure about:

      1. Will the links be followed? If so, will Google respect rel="nofollow"?

      2. Will the image be considered 1 image? (indexed as image, etc.) Or will each map segment be treated as a separate image?

      3. Any other SEO pros\cons to consider when adding an image map to an existing page?

      Thanks,

      Corwin.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KaneJamison
        KaneJamison @corwin last edited by

        Corwin - that's awesome info - thanks for posting the results of your tests!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • corwin
          corwin last edited by

          For people who find this and want the final results, these are what I see at my site, YMMV:

          1. Links from image maps are indeed followed, Google crawls pages that are only accessible via the image map. nofollow also seems to be respected, unless Google just decided not to index these pages for another reason, but I doubt it.

          2. The images are indeed indexed for Google images as one image containing the entire map. This image gets the "alt" value of the entire image, not the individual map segments.

          I hope this is useful.

          KaneJamison 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • corwin
            corwin last edited by

            Thank you! Great info and suggestions. I'll take your advice and post here once I get the results, so others can benefit from it.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • KaneJamison
              KaneJamison last edited by

              1 - Can't say regarding nofollow - you could always try adding rel="nofollow" to the <area> tag and give it a shot.

              Whether the links are followed depends on whether they're indexed. In my opinion, they shouldn't have any issue crawling the links. If you look at the source code of a page with an image map on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_map for example) you'll see that the links are pretty clearly listed (and in Chrome's source code view they're even hyperlinked - which alone suggests they should be crawling them just fine.)

              That said, I have not tested this, and I can't find any references to actual testing done online.

              If I were you, I would test this by doing the following:

              1. Create an image map somewhere on your site (we'll call it the Map Page).
              2. Link that image map to a 2nd page of the site that is not linked anywhere else on the Map Page.
              3. Feel free to tweet the URLs of both pages to speed up the indexation process.
              4. Go in to Google Webmaster Tools, and see if a link is reported to the 2nd Page from the Map Page.
              5. If there isn't, double check the cache date of the Map Page to see if it's after the image map was added to the page.
              • If you go through that test, and GWT doesn't report a link from the Map Page to the 2nd Page, then I would go ahead and use the image map, but I would also add text links on the page to ensure your optimal site structure is in place.
              • If GWT does report the link, then that seem sufficient to me, so long as you specify the alt and title text for each individual link since that will function as your anchor text.

              2 - The image will probably be considered one image as far as indexing in Google Images (would be strange if they indexed portions of the image), however the alt and title attributes should behave more like multiple images.

              3 - I would just do the test I described above and you should be set. Also, take a look at what popular websites using Image Maps do in this situation. National real estate listing sites are a common one for image maps IIRC.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                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

              • Kingalan1

                Removing Toxic Back Links Targeting Obscure URL or Image

                There are 2 or 3 URLs and one image file that dozens of toxic domains are linking to on our website. Some of these pages have hundreds of links from 4-5 domains. Rather than disavowing these links, would it make sense to simply break these links, change the URL that the link to and not create a redirect? It seems like this would be a sure fire way to get rid of these links. Any downside to this approach? Thanks, 
                Alan

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
                1
              • robandsarahgillespie

                Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!

                I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results.  I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text.  Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers).  For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description. A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this: Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg   .... 002, 003 etc Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post. Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image. So my question is - is this right?    The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect: https://moz.com/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search "Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image." This is not the case.  Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text. Thoughts?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robandsarahgillespie
                0
              • fablau

                Combining images with text as anchor text

                Hello everyone, I am working to create sub-category pages on our website virtualsheetmusic.com, and I'd like to have your thoughts on using a combination of images and text as anchor text in order to maximize keyword relevancy. Here is an example (I'll keep it simple): Let's take our violin sheet music main category page located at /violin/, which includes the following sub-categories: Christmas Classical Traditional So, the idea is to list the above sub-categories as links on the main violin sheet music page, and if we had to use simple text links, that would be something like: Christmas
                Classical
                Traditional Now, since what we really would like to target are keywords like: "christmas violin sheet music" "classical violin sheet music" "traditional violin sheet music" I would be tempted to make the above links as follows: Christmas violin sheet music
                Classical violin sheet music
                Traditional violin sheet music But I am sure that would be too much overwhelming for the users, even if the best CSS design were applied to it. So, my idea would be to combine images with text, in a way to put those long-tail keywords inside the image ALT tag, so to have links like these: Christmas
                Classical
                Traditional That would allow a much easier way to work the UI , and at the same time keep relevancy for each link. I have seen some of our competitors doing that and they have top-notch results on the SEs. My questions are: 1. Do you see any negative effect of doing this kind of links from the SEO standpoint? 2. Would you suggest any better way to accomplish what I am trying to do? I am eager to know your thoughts about this. Thank you in advance to anyone!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                1
              • john_marketade

                Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?

                Hello, I am wondering if there seems to be a preference for adding hreflang tags (from this article).  My client just changed their site from gTLDs to ccTLDs, and a few sites have taken a pretty big traffic hit.  One issue is definitely the amount of redirects to the page, but I am also going to work with the developer to add hreflang tags.  My question is - is it better to add them to the header of each page, or the site map, or both, or something else?  Any other thoughts are appreciated.  Our Australia site, which was at least findable using Australia Google before this relaunch, is not showing up, even when you search the company name directly. Thanks!Lauryn

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | john_marketade
                0
              • BritneyMuller

                Images Not Indexing? (Nudity Warning!) - Before & After Photos

                One of our clients is in the Cosmetic Surgery business (bodevolve.com) and individuals most likely to purchase a cosmetic procedure only search for 2 things....'**before & after photos' and 'cost'. ** That being said we've worked extremely hard to optimize all 500+ before and after photos. And to our great disappointment, they still aren't being indexed...we are testing a few things but any feedback would be greatly appreciated! All photos are in the 'attachment' sitemap: http://bodevolve.com/sitemap_index.xml I'm also testing a few squeeze pages like this one: http://bodevolve.com/tummy-tuck-before-and-after-photos/ Thanks so much, Brit

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BritneyMuller
                0
              • BeytzNet

                Is there a limit to images file names?

                Hi, I have an eCommerce site with hundreds of product images. For management reasons files are named in length to have the product details in them.
                Is there a limit for a filename length before it is considered ambiguous or spammy etc.?
                (it usually ranges 50-70 chars). Thanks

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                0
              • cyberlicious

                Sitespeed: Do images require width and height attributes?

                Currently working on a sitespeed issue, and was wondering if not having width and height for images actually do cause a problem.  We simply Photoshop the resolution we require for the image and add it to the page as is.  I though this would actually speed it up, but I am getting from www.gtmetrix.com that we should have them. What's your experience?  Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cyberlicious
                0
              • HD_Leona

                Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search

                Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos.  When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed.  The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such:  domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results.  This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can  I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent:  * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos?  I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona
                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
              • Digital Marketers
              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.