Alt Tags on multiple product images

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I work on SEO for an ecommerce site and wanted to find out how important it is to optimise all images with alt tags.

We have alt tags in place, however have not optimised descriptions for the following example images:

Front of cupboard

Back of cupboard

Side of cupboard etc

Is this dangerous for SEO if these images all have the same alt tag?

We have thousands of products so it would be a huge job to update these, but if it's crucial for SEO we can work through our priorities.

Thank you!

[BeckyKey]

Yes I was thinking of testing this.

I have just checked our images and from what I can see the devs have set the alt tag to default to the product title.

Then the image title is a bit more descriptive - does the image title/legend help with anything or should we ignore these and update alt tags instead?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Sorry Becky, I forgot to say that without some level of testing, it is almost impossible to say with any degree of certainty just what you would get from this as a site-wide task. Depending on the products, searches conducted and how Google ranks the images, you may find a good deal of additional traffic or you may find very little.

Perhaps take a control group to test and monitor the products over the course of a month to see if sales / traffic has increased.

-Andy

[BeckyKey]

Do you still not need to optimise each different image?

[BeckyKey]

Thank you this is really helpful!

[BeckyKey]

Great thank you very much for your help!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Becky,

You aren't likely to be penalised for this, but the benefit you can derive from ALT text will be lessened. If the picture is of a floor fan, and the ALT tag says this, there is no problem.

However, I would be saying something like "Metal Blizzard Floor Fan 12" 55W with tilt". It will help because you have more of a chance of it turning up in image searches = more traffic.

-Andy

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Definitely a great idea is there is a dev on hand to do this

-Andy

[Alick300]

Hi Becky,

Completely agreed with Andy's suggestion.I  would like to add one more thing here I'm also working on a large e-commerce site with thousands of products. I find a good way to insert alt tag very easily I asked web developer to create a module by which every products having alt tag with product name and web developer did a great job by writing only few lines of code. you can ask web developer to do the same.

Now I don't need to add alt tag individually on each product and it saves my time.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

[BeckyKey]

Hi Andy

That's great thank you. I'm finding it harder to describe some products, which have very similar images. Say for instance, a fan at different angles.

Will I get penalised if Alt tags have the same name? So if say 3 images all have, floor fan? This is happening as a default at the moment, but I am looking into getting them updated - however if the benefit is small other tasks will be prioritised.

Thank you

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Becky,

What you need to be careful of, is over optimising with ALT tags. This can lead to issues, but what you suggest is correct. John Mueller from Google had this to say about ALT tags...

"alt attribute should be used to describe the image. So if you have an image of a big blue pineapple chair you should use the alt tag that best describes it, which is alt=”big blue pineapple chair.”** title attribute** should be used when the image is a hyperlink to a specific page. The title attribute should contain information about what will happen when you click on the image. For example, if the image will get larger, it should read something like, title=”View a larger version of the big blue pineapple chair image.”

If the image someone can click on is the rear view of a cupboard, then say this in the ALT tag. However, it is worthwhile remembering that you need to be descriptive with these.

Here is a great article on the subject.

-Andy