How much SEO value does a fashion site get from bolting text onto the bottom of home page? Does the value compensate for cluttering up a page focused on an iconic image?
-
Getting ready to launch a completely redesigned site for a fashion designer. Since it is a fashion site, visitors do not need text to describe what the site is about., We are weighing three options: 1) clean design with no text (just images and navigational links), 2) bolting on a couple of sentences of text at the bottom of the page to signal keyword terms to the search engines, 3) following the lead of the top ranking site in the category and adding lots of text to the bottom of the page.
Do the SEO benefits justify cluttering up the design by bolting text onto the bottom of the home page, and if so, how many characters of text seem to be the minimum to be effective?
-
Nice work!
-
I am going to close out the conversation by thanking the respondents and admitting that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Google's current rankings for the most competitive keywords in my niche have become highly correlated with the sites that have the most comprehensive text. In my opinion, it is providing a skewed result, as many viewers of fashion sites ignore the text, but there is not much sense in fighting the algo. The algo isn't smart enough yet to be able to judge great photography.
-
As the owner of a design firm/SEO agency, I feel justified saying that designers need to grow up a little bit and stop making excuses (imho.) It is not that hard to make a high quality site that includes both text and images. Photographers do it all the time (like this.)
Put information on your site that visitors will actually enjoy reading. Talk about what kind of materials the clothes were made from. You can describe the stitch patterns, the designer, what famous people have worn your clothes (if any) suggestions of how to accessorize the item with other products from your store...etc.
Obviously, you should find tactful and organic ways of including that information. In closing, I'd like to point out that sites without textual content rarely out-rank their competitors. Even PR 7-10 sites like Facebook & Pinterest are not able to rank for pictures without text.
-
Agreeing with everyone here, text is vital. Perhaps the non-text sites that rank do so because no other sites compete with them meaning links alone are placing them up high (i.e. no SEO optimization). Imagine being able to add some nice text to a well designed page and quickly gaining great placement.
As well as permanent introductory text I'd also recommend adding text that will change out, like a placement for the hottest fashion accessory and another for the hottest designer. Have these change out regularly and also link through to lower level pages. This will also give people another reason to come back, just like a womens gossip magazine, people buy them week after week because they know content is updated often.
-
Randy those two sites are VERY well known brands - they can get away with less content to a certain extent (they're going to get a lot of natural links easily). I agree with EGOL, text is very important. Add some content about what your site is about, deep links to some key pages on your site, blog excerpts etc. Remember, getting visitors to your site and then off your homepage to other areas of your site is the key, not some fancy banner that takes up half the page and 'looks nice'.
-
My previous response makes a bit more sense if I added the word "fashion" in front of the word designer in the first sentence. I totally agree that letting "web" or "graphic' designers make final decisions about web pages is a deadly mistake. However, when developing for a fashion house and the fashion designer is also paying the bills, his opinion counts for a lot, even if it is lousy SEO. On a anecdotal note, one of the most competitive terms in the fashion industry in "wedding dresses". The top ranked designer site has a lot of text in their links, but virtually no other textual content. So here is an anecdotal example that text content is not necessary to rank well for a fashion site. However, it is obviously foolhardy to give a lot of weight to a single example that may just be an exception to the rule.
-
I know lots of designers who are adamant about their opinions.... but very few to none of them have done A/B testing to determine the impact of their designs on visitors, conversions or search engines.
Lots of redesigns tank when they go up. Traffic drops or conversions drop or rankings drop. Or a combination of these.
I am all ears to hear about case studies... but don't have a lot of faith in untested opinions.
I let my visitors inform me of how the design is working. They are the voice that counts.
-
Many designers, who ultimately approve the design of their sites, would disagree with your opinion. A couple of examples of sites with minimal text on the home page are, marcjacobs.com and versace.com. Obviously, the fact that there are examples of sites with home pages with minimal text does not mean it it appropriate, maybe just the in way to go. But then again, being on trend is everything in the fashion industry
-
Visitors don't need text? I find that difficult to believe. People like to read about fashion, as you can see from the numerous fashion blogs that get tons of hits. If the design wasn't created with text in mind, it sounds like the design needs to be changed.
-
My homepage looks like the homepage of the LATimes.com.
Tons of text.
Intentional.
Those tons of text pull in thousands long tail visitors.
So, if I removed all of that text and slapped up an image I would loose a lot of visitors, a lot of income and a lot of SEO benefit that those visitors produce through likes links tweets and shares.
Nobody is going to "bolt" anything onto my site. I would tell the designer... "This text is an essential part of the design... non negotiable. Use your creativity to make it look great."
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
-
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
Do non-canonical pages need to worry about things like Alt Text, H1 tags, etc?
Just wanted to confirm, if we have multiple similar pages, with all of their canonicals pointing towards the prime page, does it impact SEO rankings at all if the non-canonical pages were missing alt text from their images, or shared duplicate or multiple H1 tags? Basic SEO page construction stuff? I know some will hurt user CTR but wanted to make sure that SEO crawlers don't care about them even if indexed.
On-Page Optimization | | SimonZM2 -
SEO for E-Commerce Sites
Hi Everybody, I have two e-commerce sites just launched with not much content at the moment just user login pages for the clients to avail the service. The management is not interested to put much content there i think. Maximum what they will be putting only 5 pages of content in total, not more than this. Any practical tips how to optimize such sites especially when there is not much content. Best
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
SEO targeted text on Mobile Site Version
Hey Mozzers, I run SEO for a retail site www.uncommongoods.com. We are building a mobile version of our site on m.uncommongoods.com On each of the category pages of www.uncommongoods.com, we have included a few lines of text at the bottom of the page to get some of our target keywords into the body. As an example, if you look at this page: http://www.uncommongoods.com/office/journals-stationery/journals You'll see this copy at the bottom: "Find unique journals and diaries at UncommonGoods. Our creative journal gifts are great for marking special occasions with sentimental keepsakes." We are debating whether or not to remove this copy on the category pages of our mobile site, just to keep the pages as clean as possible. Would there be any risk in leaving this out ? Thanks for your help on this! -Zack
On-Page Optimization | | znotes0 -
Are sliding text SEO friendly?
Hi mozzers, I am wondering if sliding text SEO friendly such as this webpage: http://www.questexchange.org/?s=faq If it isn't is there a way to make it SEO Friendly? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art1 -
What should I put in the image ALT and title text for blogger?
Hello, I wanted to know what should I put in the image ALT and title text for blogger. I've read so many damn articles about ALT text and Title text for blogger; nothing explained what I put in it though. What am I supposed to put in it that will help me with my on page optimization? (Stuff like do I use spaces or dashes, do I put my keyword in there, how many characters should I not exceed, do I put one word or two words?) If I have a picture of a backpack, what should the alt text be? What if I have 10 different pictures of backpacks on 1 page? How about if I had a backpack next to a tv in an image? A specific answer or a detailed one is nice!
On-Page Optimization | | 6786486312640 -
How much does punctuation affect on-page SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "men's custom suits." Using the on-page analysis tool from SEOmoz it gives me an F for "mens custom suits" but an A with the apostrophe. Even though the apostrophe is proper English grammar, does it affect rankings either way?
On-Page Optimization | | cgray010 -
Home page duplicated content issue
Hi there! The home page of my site can be seen under www.mysitename.com and www.mysitename.com/EN/ or www.mysitename.com/ES/ (depending on your language). I understand that this is duplicated content because they show the same content under different URLs. To solve this we've done (depending on your language) a 301 redirect from www.mysitename.com to www.mysitename.com/EN/ or www.mysitename.com/ES/ Is this correct? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Xopie0