Portfolio Image Landing Page Question/Issue
-
Hello,
We have a client with a very image heavy website. They have Portfolio pages with a large number of images. We are currently working on adding more copy to the site but wanted to confirm we are taking the right approach for the images on the site.
Under the current structure each image has its own landing page (with no copy) and is fed in (or generated on) to a Portfolio Page. While we know this is not ideal as it would be best to have the images on the Portfolio Page directly or even fill out the landing pages with copy; due to the amount of images and the fact these are only images (and not a 'targeted' page) that would not really be feasible.
Aside from the thin content concern these individual landing pages were being indexed so they are showing hundreds of pages on their sitemap.xml and in GSC even though they only have a few actual pages.
In the meantime we went into each image-page and placed a canonical tag back to the main Portfolio Page (with the hopes to add content to that page and have it as the ‘overarching’ page). Would this be the right approach? – We considered ‘noindex-follow’ tags but would want the images to be crawled; the issue is because the pages are not on the actual page are we canonicalizing these images to nothing?
Any insight would really be appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
-
Standard operating procedure for us is to nofollow anything we noindex. Theory is that pagerank will still flow through a link to another page that has been noindexed if you don't nofollow it. But since it has been noindexed the PR will just be trapped there and can't move on to another page through any links on that page.
I don't know how true that theory is, but erring on the side of caution has never cost me a dime, and nofollowing links to a page that is noindexed won't have a negative impact.
-
Thanks again. We noticed you mentioned 'nofollowing' the pages but Steve said no-index, follow so we just wanted to confirm which you would recommend for these image/landing pages?
Best,
- B.
-
Thank you both for your answers and help.
I’m not sure why they set it up that way it was executed before I came on board. The site actually has a ‘gallery style’ page (with the enlarging function) but I believe they uploaded them to the Portfolio through those landing page URLs. Still trying to figure out the how and why.
For now we placed ‘no-index,follow’ tags on each image/page and will make sure each image is listed on the sitemap and has the right files names/alt text, which should help thank you.
It’s not how I would have set it up but there are so many images already in this structure. The help is very appreciated and if there is anything I might have missed please let me know.
Thanks again.
Best,
-
Is there some reason you need to have individual landing pages for each image? That's a lot of bloat. Hundreds (or thousands) of unique landing pages with nothing but an image isn't going to convey either relevance or authority to search engines, nor does it sound particularly useful to users.
Since Googlebot can't "see" the images, I would follow Steve's advice and add the images to your sitemap, noindex and nofollowing the pages that lack content. Taking it a step further, I would also make sure the filenames are readable by search engines and alt text is entered for each image. Doing so will help Google understand what the images are and may help display you for relevant queries.
You may want to consider just doing gallery style pages for your portfolios with the option to enlarge a photo to max resolution by clicking on it if you're just trying to let users see a larger image. Probably will help with UX on top of SEO.
-
Maybe think about noindex-follow the thin pages and create an image sitemap to make sure your images are crawled.
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
-
Can we put long-tail keywords at footer menu and create landing pages for same?
When we cannot rank for multiple keywords; can we try creating landing pages for some long-tail keywords and put all such landing pages at footer menu to rank for search queries? Will this helps and sound spammy to Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Noindex / Nofollow multiple reviews pages?
I have well over a hundred pages of reviews (10 per page). I know this is solid content and I'd hate to not be able to leverage it, but I'm running into the issue of having duplicate title tags and H1s on all of the pages. What's the best way to make use of the review content without have those types of issues? Is a noindex / nofollow strategy something I should be considering here for Page 2 and beyond? Thanks! Edit: I did additional digging into pagination strategies and found this terrific article on Moz. I'm thinking it should address my questions regarding review pages as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_Mac0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
301 Externally Linked, But Non-Producing Pages, To Productive Pages Needing Links?
I'm working on a site that has some non-productive pages without much of an upside potential, but that are linked-to externally. The site also has some productive pages, light in external links, in a somewhat related topic. What do you think of 301ing the non-productive pages with links to the productive pages without links in order to give them more external link love? Would it make much of a difference? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Effect of Removing Footer Links In all Pages Except Home Page
Dear MOZ Community: In an effort to improve the user interface of our business website (a New York CIty commercial real estate agency) my designer eliminated a standardized footer containing links to about 20 pages. The new design maintains this footer on the home page, but all other pages (about 600 eliminate the footer). The new design does a very good job eliminating non essential items. Most of the changes remove or reduce the size of unnecessary design elements. The footer removal is the only change really effect the link structure. The new design is not launched yet. Hoping to receive some good advice from the MOZ community before proceeding My concern is that removing these links could have an adverse or unpredictable effect on ranking. Last Summer we launched a completely redesigned version of the site and our ranking collapsed for 3 months. However unlike the previous upgrade this modifications does not URL names, tags, text or any major element. Only major change is the footer removal. Some of the footer pages provide good (not critical) info for visitors. Note the footer will still appear on the home page but will be removed on the interior pages. Are we risking any detrimental ranking effect by removing this footer? Can we compensate by adding text links to these pages if the links from the footer are removed? Seems irregular to have a home page footer but no footer on the other pages. Are we inviting any downgrade, penalty, adverse SEO effect by implementing this? I very much like the new design but do not want to risk a fall in rank and traffic. Thanks for your input!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Urgent Site Migration Help: 301 redirect from legacy to new if legacy pages are NOT indexed but have links and domain/page authority of 50+?
Sorry for the long title, but that's the whole question. Notes: New site is on same domain but URLs will change because URL structure was horrible Old site has awful SEO. Like real bad. Canonical tags point to dev. subdomain (which is still accessible and has robots.txt, so the end result is old site IS NOT INDEXED by Google) Old site has links and domain/page authority north of 50. I suspect some shady links but there have to be good links as well My guess is that since that are likely incoming links that are legitimate, I should still attempt to use 301s to the versions of the pages on the new site (note: the content on the new site will be different, but in general it'll be about the same thing as the old page, just much improved and more relevant). So yeah, I guess that's it. Even thought the old site's pages are not indexed, if the new site is set up properly, the 301s won't pass along the 'non-indexed' status, correct? Thanks in advance for any quick answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
Where does link authority get passed to a stand alone landing page
Hi All, We are currently building a landing page that contains a bunch of funny top 10's, some that aren’t suitable for all customers, it can only be accessed from a PR source or recipient of one of our emails. The question I have is; where will the authority gained from people linking to this page go? Would it be passed to the home page, if there’s a link to it? Or would you recommend a way to control it? Any insight welcome. Cheers Neal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Exclaimer-2868850