Why are my blog slideshow images not indexed?
-
I'm managing a design blog hosted on WordPress. Each "design project" article includes a slideshow with additional images (and captions) for the project - these are images and text not found in the article itself.
Every slide has the same page path as the article, but a different query param at the end. So if the article is /article the first slide would be /article?slide=1 for example.
I'm having two issues:
- The slideshow images don't seem to be getting indexed.
- Screaming Frog reports duplicate meta descriptions and title tags for each slideshow page (same meta as article).
I want to do what's best overall from an SEO perspective. Having the slideshow images show in Google image search is a must. And having the captions indexed might help too? But I want the Google image results linking to the article and not the individual slideshow pages. And I don't want duplicate meta issues.
What's the best thing to do? Submit a sitemap that lists both article and slideshow images? "Rel canonical" the param'd slideshow urls to the base article url (not sure this makes total sense, since slide content is different from the article)? Get rid of slideshow altogether and put images in body? Some combo of these?
Hopefully this makes sense. Any thoughts appreciated!
-
I think I'll try an Wordpress image sitemap plugin. Just unsure if I should also no-index the slideshow pages, since duplicate meta might be a problem...
-
The problem that I have found with this in the past is that Google sees the whole page and not the images. I found this to be more of a limit of Wordpress.
However, you could use an image sitemap and see if you can get them indexed that way?
-Andy
-
Thanks for the thorough answer, Andy. Why wouldn't you suggest trying to get slideshow images indexed? For us, the slideshow images are high quality, unique visual assets.
-
It sounds like there are a number of issues going on here and it's quite hard to envisage everything.
Having captions indexed as snippets requires the page to be setup in such a way that Google can use them. But remember that in terms of what Google shows, they will deliver what they thing bets suits the search query.
In terms of images being indexed, have you thought about having an image sitemap, or having them included in this? However, I wouldn't be setting a canonical from slideshows to base pages as this sounds like it could cause you a load of headaches.
Duplication is hard to assess as there could be a number of reasons from this, including incorrectly set canonical tags, indexed pages or other semi-technical issues.
Personally, I wouldn't be looking at slideshow images as something to be indexed, but I would be using some of these images in the page itself. This is just what I have found in the past.
-Andy
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
-
Negative SEO with Google Images
We have a client in the heavy equipment industry that is trying to "push down" images in a Google image search that are associated with an accident over ten years ago. This client has launched a new website, and we have applied the best practices of on-page SEO (page titles, unique meta-descriptions, alt-image tags, focused keyword targeting, etc.). The challenge we have is with Google Image results. It seems the image results shown in the Google Image search rankings are often not inline with how images have been labeled in the alt-tag section. I have checked these images with the Moz Chrome extension, and I have often found the way the image is labeled in the alt-tag is not related to the search query made within the Google image search bar. I certainly may not be factoring in other weighted items when it comes to how images are ranked. Are there other ranking factors associated with Google Image results outside of the Alt-Image Tag? If so, what are those factors? Our ultimate goal is to provide a strategy that would allow us to tag images within this specific sector that are relevant to this specific heavy equipment product, and at the same time, "push down" the rankings of the images that have a negative association to them. We certainly want to take the right approach here, and want to earn these rankings. However, the way Google ranks images seems to be a mystery of sorts. Is there a specific strategy relevant to Google Image rankings that would fall inline with the challenge listed above? I appreciate any advice on this topic. Thank you.
Image & Video Optimization | | JaredBroussard0 -
How To: Image Transition Effect on Website
What program would allow an image transition effect where product images when viewed on our website change to alternative angles/shots of the same product when the cursor is on the image? This is a common transition effect of websites such as http://studiominc.com.au/collections/pyramids. Please let us know if you have used programs like these and how to implement this into our website. Thank you!
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Local Search Clean up Done. Now Best Way to Index?
I have spent hours doing some local search clean up and have a list of all the URLs to index, about 75. Is there a place I can dump these to get them all indexed quickly or do I have to wait for the hand of Google to come down and bless me with indexing. I don't want to dump all these to Google +, Facebook, or Twitter; that would just be wrong. Any ideas for fast indexing. I want them to all get indexed before the business address changes in a couple years 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Optimizing Images
I have realized that our images are way to big. I would like to resize them and upload back again but I am afraid to do it as every image in wordpress is uploaded and has own link and then all this links will be not found. Is there some other way how to do it without a plugin. Or it is not a problem that I will delete that old large images and then upload the new smaller? Thank you very much for any advice Iris
Image & Video Optimization | | Rebeca10 -
How do I improve positioning in Google Images?
Looking around in Webmaster tools today and I noticed we have hundreds of thousands of impressions in Google Images, but a very low CTR. I understand normal SEO, but what about increasing rank in Google Images? It is hard to get links straight to an image, and we already use proper alt tags. Any other ideas?
Image & Video Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
WordPress image file names SEO question
I’m using a plugin to upload images directly from Adobe Lightroom to WordPress and while the process is very convenient it adds “wpid-“ to the beginning of every image file name, so my “seo-friendly-image-title.jpg” becomes “wpid-seo-friendly-image-title.jpg”. The plugin author claims that it’s a WordPress thing and there isn’t anything he can do about it, yet it doesn’t happen when using the same plugin to upload to the NextGen Gallery Plugin instead of the built in WordPress media manager. I’m not really a fan of NextGen though so I’d rather use the built in WordPress media management. This is obviously an SEO forum not a WordPress troubleshooting forum, but I wanted to give a bit of background. My question is whether that “wpid-” at the beginning of all my image file names is going to cause any sort of SEO issue. If not, I won’t worry about it, but if it does I’ll have to either find another plugin or just go back to exporting from Lightroom to the desktop and then uploading through WordPress. Thanks in advance for any input.
Image & Video Optimization | | StephenWeigel0 -
Google images indexing on no-index html page?
Hi, I wonder if a image can get indexed, included in google images if it is located on a html page with a no-follow tag? Thanks for your help.
Image & Video Optimization | | wildnis0 -
H1 image
Hi, I was talking to a web consultant today that teaches SEO, he said that an image is ok as an h1 tag as long as it has an alt tag. This is something new to me and something that I've always tried to avoid. Does this now work? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | brightonseorob0