Performing Internal Optimization Without Much Anchor Text?
-
Hi guys. We're in the process of building a new site, and are using a lot of icon based linking, image linking, etc. There is some basic text linking here and there, but not a whole lot.
My concern is, because I'm not using actual anchor text, but just images, that crawlers are going to have a more difficult time determining what pages are about.
Do I have a valid concern, or am I just worrying about nothing?
If this concern is valid, what is the best way to remedy this concern? Alt img tags?
-
Hi Cody. I just got in on the tail end of this. I'd also put keywords in the file name. Check out a previous thread on this.
-
Awesome. Thanks for all the clear answers guys. Sounds like pretty simple stuff. Just never done a site this graphically intense before.
Appreciate it!!
-
Exactly! Google has tons of factors to determine what content, images, etc are about. Still "after the book" the alt tag should be the one that is used as anchor text when using an image as a link.
-
Exactly right, and remember, Google does not only use the alt tag to determine what the image is about, it also uses the surrounding text to get an idea. You can see it uses this method when searching in Google images, many times the target image does not even have an alt tag but Google seems to be relevant.
-
Hi Cody,
if your content is good (it includes relevant keywords and phrases), and if you're using the most important tags properly (title, h1, h2 etc.), you should be fine.
One trick you can use to help with internal linking is to create a html sitemap of your site and link to it from the footer. The sitemap would include keyword reach links to the most important pages of your site (for example categories and subcategories).
Hope it helps.
-
Hi Cody,
image alt tags serve as anchor text if you use images as links.
I hope that answered your question.
Gr.,
Istvan
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
-
Correct keywords Anchor text for links passing
Hi i have some old pages with more link equity, i m planning to key some bestseller in the main content.. my question is on best use of anchor text, can i use the below for eg: Product name is Chloride Exide Safepower Cs 7-12 12V Sealed Battery so i want to use the key word which is "12v 7ah Battery" in anchor text or buy 12v 7ah battery in Anchor text, will this google consider as spam?? Pls suggest
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Help... To Optimize Category Page or Not?
My question is about whether to optimize a category page or not, but it’s a rather odd situation. Here’s a bit of background to start. When we relaunched our site, about six months ago, we had primary, secondary, and tertiary categories created. A user could reach all three levels by clicking through the site. Then we decided instead of linking to the tertiary categories, that we’d turn them into filters which can be applied at the secondary level. Thus, there is not actually a direct link to the 3rd level categories on the site. An important side note, I did check and confirm they are still included in the sitemap file. My initial thoughts were to forget any further optimization of those 3rd level categories, but as it turns out we still have rankings for some of them. Now the question… Because some of these pages are ranking and are found in the sitemap, should I include them in my SEO plan to build up and optimize, or because they are no longer linked to directly on the site will they eventually fizzle out (and I shouldn’t do anything further). This is such a unique situation that I am really looking for some insight from the community. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Google Cache Is Blank for Text-only
Hi, I'm doing some SEO for www.suprafootwear.com, and for some reason when I go to text-only in google cache, nothing shows up. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:suprafootwear.com&es_sm=91&strip=1 That seems to be the case for all of the different pages on the site, but the content is still appearing on the serp. I have never seen this before, and I'm not sure what's happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigwavew0 -
International SEO - cannibalisation and duplicate content
Hello all, I look after (in house) 3 domains for one niche travel business across three TLDs: .com .com.au and co.uk and a fourth domain on a co.nz TLD which was recently removed from Googles index. Symptoms: For the past 12 months we have been experiencing canibalisation in the SERPs (namely .com.au being rendered in .com) and Panda related ranking devaluations between our .com site and com.au site. Around 12 months ago the .com TLD was hit hard (80% drop in target KWs) by Panda (probably) and we began to action the below changes. Around 6 weeks ago our .com TLD saw big overnight increases in rankings (to date a 70% averaged increase). However, almost to the same percentage we saw in the .com TLD we suffered significant drops in our .com.au rankings. Basically Google seemed to switch its attention from .com TLD to the .com.au TLD. Note: Each TLD is over 6 years old, we've never proactively gone after links (Penguin) and have always aimed for quality in an often spammy industry. **Have done: ** Adding HREF LANG markup to all pages on all domain Each TLD uses local vernacular e.g for the .com site is American Each TLD has pricing in the regional currency Each TLD has details of the respective local offices, the copy references the lacation, we have significant press coverage in each country like The Guardian for our .co.uk site and Sydney Morning Herlad for our Australia site Targeting each site to its respective market in WMT Each TLDs core-pages (within 3 clicks of the primary nav) are 100% unique We're continuing to re-write and publish unique content to each TLD on a weekly basis As the .co.nz site drove such little traffic re-wrting we added no-idex and the TLD has almost compelte dissapread (16% of pages remain) from the SERPs. XML sitemaps Google + profile for each TLD **Have not done: ** Hosted each TLD on a local server Around 600 pages per TLD are duplicated across all TLDs (roughly 50% of all content). These are way down the IA but still duplicated. Images/video sources from local servers Added address and contact details using SCHEMA markup Any help, advice or just validation on this subject would be appreciated! Kian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | team_tic1 -
Optimal ratio of different categories of link
Hello, I know this probably depends on market sector, etc., but are there broad guidelines on the optimal ratio of different types of links - blogs, directory links, citations, etc. I'm working for a tourism business and see nearly all of their links are from directories - both generic and tourism specific. I'm thinking about re-balancing that with guest blogs, PR work, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How to optimize on-page for a large service area?
Hello Everyone, I'm in the process of setting up a website for a plumbing company that services a relatively large area in Michigan. They have physical locations spread out across the area, but they want to optimize for other areas as well. Naturally, I set up pages on the site with unique content relating to the town/area. I understand that these may not rank locally, but we can at lest shoot for organic rankings in this area. My question here more relates to how to link these pages in the site. Should I have a bunch of footer links with something like city, state, zip as the anchor text. Or should I create an "Areas Served" page, and link out from there? I don't want to appear spammy, beaus this isn't what i'm trying to do, I just want to make sure this is done right. Thanks Zach
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seolinktools0 -
Should I move our blog internal....
I wanted to also ask the wider moz community this question. Our blogs are currently run on blogger/wordpress using a subdomain strategy - blog.website.com and has now gained a home page PR3. It's been running for 2-3 years. This runs contrary to best practice of website.com/blog. I'm now considering making the blog internal but want to get your opinion as the longer I leave it, the bigger a decision it will be.... Do the pro's of making the blog internal outweigh the cons of doing so ? Pro's Blog benefits from root domain Fresh content on the site that people can interact with Root domain benefits from links the content gains Easier to analyse user activity Con's Loss of Page Rank Effort to 301 all URL's and content CMS altered to allow creation of blog content
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Optimized page titles post penguin
Just a quick question to hear a few opinions on page titles in a post penguin/panda world. For example, we are working on a large downloads portal that offers Addons for games called FSX and FS2004... Page titles are currently as follows: Concorde for FSX - Civil Aircraft Downloads
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
British Airways Boeing 747 for FSX - Civil Aircraft Downloads
Quants Airbus A380 for FSX - Civil Aircraft Downloads I thought it would be beneficial to remove the boilerplate "Civil Aircraft Downloads" to stop the template effect in the titles. Yay or nay? Good idea or bad idea? Other ideas? Also, after removing that the titles would be as follows: British Airways Boeing 747 for FSX We still will have "for FSX" boiler plate text...is this okay? Perhaps we should remove the "for" and just have the title as "FSX Concorde" or "Concorde FSX" -what do you guys think? Are there any other title suggestions you guys can recommend? Your thoughts, tips and suggestions are very much appreciated.0