Image alt attribute vs. plain text in link?
-
I'm building a product category browsing page for a high-falutin' jewelry retailer where we display only product photos linking to individual product pages, without any text in the links.
From an SEO and link-juice-passing perspective, is it most effective to embed the product titles as the alt attribute in each image, or to leave alt="" and use text substitutions (i.e. an inner which is css'd to display: none) within the <a>to help search engines accept my product titles as the link text with the most credibility?</a>
-
Nope. Sorry. Google can crawl CSS, so anything you do to hide text (z-index, position:relative, etc) is easily detectable (Google can even parse javascript).
Now, sometimes you can get away with such things, like in a drop down menu for example. But if you do it, be sure to use the standards from a site that is well indexed.
You're right, I was looking at that to... hahaha. From my experience though, It's better to have one link.. maybe not much better, but at least a little bit.
Does this help Jonathan?
-
It's interesting to note that Etsy (your example) uses the second option.
What do you think of absolutely positioning the image over the text, so that the text is only visible until obscured by the image as it loads? I don't mind that, and it would allow me to sneak in some decent anchor text past the client's visual look-and-feel regime...
-
Great question. I recently worked on a site with exact same layout, and I chose the first one.
I think it's better for users because they won't have to 'think' about which one they should they click. It's also a bit easier to maintain, so you can focus resources elsewhere.
-
Can I do:
Or will having the alt text and the plain text both in the contents of the same link pollute its keyword focus? Would it be better to do something like:
And then 301 or rel=canonical the two PHP targets to the same page? (I understand that if both links point to the same URL, Google will ignore the second one on the page, considering it a duplicate.)
-
Hey Jonathan,
Chris is right. I strongly recommend:
-
use the alt tag (and don't hide text)
-
use text links along with the images
A great example is http://www.etsy.com/category/jewelry
(except they didn't name the images very well)Does this help?
-
-
I agree.... I would go to these high-falutin' folks and tell them that a little text on the page is a good thing.
As Chris suggests I would name the images and create alt attributes for appropriate keywords.
-
I would be very careful about using the display: none route. Hidden text is considered a no no. If you can't convince the client of the importance of link text then go with the alt tag. I would also name the image files to reflect the anchor text I would like to use.
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
-
Site Wide Links
Howdy Moz! So our agency has been around for long enough to have a few sites we've built that have our credit in their footer resulting in a site wide link. Mostly just our name. We've heard that Google does not particularly like site wide links, should we go through and remove some of these old links?
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia0 -
Duplicate Content, http vs https
Hi All! I just discovered that a client of ours a duplicate content issue. Essentially they have approximately 20 pages that have an http and an https version. Is there a better way to handle this than a simple 301? Regards, Frank
On-Page Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
Link to social network
I have very powerfull social network but i do not link to them from my website to improve page speed and avoid external links on main page. Althought i do link from my twitter acounts , facebook and google to my site. Should i link to my twitter or social on main page. I do not want to send people to there. I want to send people from there to my page.
On-Page Optimization | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Too many on page links
Hello, I have a page that isn't ranking very well. http://nicontrols.com/uk/drives-motors/variable-speed-drives According to the MOZ research tools I have too many on page links. I believe most of these are a result of the advanced filtration options on the left hand side of the page. I don't want to remove the filters as they are extremely useful for customers but I am also worried about the number of links Anyone get any ideas about the number of links? Should I care?
On-Page Optimization | | DavidLenehan0 -
Linking from Subfolders
Hi, on my new theme there are a bunch of links from subfolders to pages that aren't in a sub folder, these pages also don't have links on the home page. Is there an seo issue when linking from subfolders to pages that aren't. I don't know if I'm wording this properly but what I mean is, mysite/project/project1 linking to mysite/post.
On-Page Optimization | | FPK0 -
Too many on page links - created by filters
I have an ecommerce site and SEOmoz "Crawl Diagnostics Summary" points out that I have too many hyperlinks on most of my pages. The most recent thing I've done that could the culprit is the creation of number product filters. Each filter I put on the page is creating a hyperlink off that page. As an example, there's a filter available for manufacturers. Under that, there are 8 new filter links, thus new hyperlinks. On one category there are 60 new links created because of filters. I feel like these filters have made the user experience on the site better BUT has dramatically increased the number of outbound links off the page. I know keeping it to under 100 is a rule-of-thumb but at the same time there must be some validity to trying to limit them. Do you have any recommendation on how I can "have my cake and eat it too?" Thanks for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | jake3720 -
Too Many Internal Links Reported By SEOmoz
Hi, I recently did run a crawl report for my blog dapazze.com, and found that SEOmoz is reporting many pages on my blog having more than 100 internal links. I opened OSE, and made a search for one of my pages which was reported to contain more than 100 links. And I found it to contain 464 internal links. Here is the link: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=dapazze.com%2F2012%2F10%2Fwin-a-commentluv-premium-single-site-and-multi-site-license-worth-about-154-giveaway-of-october%2F&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=internal&target=page&group=0 Please have a look at it. I have chosen - Show "All" links from "only internal" pages to "this page" option in OSE, which reports me this. I see almost every page in my blog linking to every page. This is not the problem for me. I have also tried to make a search for some popular bloggers, like ProBlogger.net, ShoutMeLoud.com, HellBoundBloggers.com, etc, and all of them have the same problem. Should I be worrying about this problem? What is the problem actually?
On-Page Optimization | | rahulchowdhury0 -
Same anchor text
I am using the same anchor text on my homepage to go to two different pages. Is this bad? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | tylerfraser0