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
-
Homepage canonical url with splash or not with splash? All other links are without but logo links with splash
Hello, There is so much contradicting information about the homepage canonical URL. Many websites have all the links without the trailing splash but their homepage URL still contains the splash. Now Moz is an example with this. Their urls don't have the splash, and their canonical does not have the splash. Why is it so and why so much different ways people have it?
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud0 -
Background Images and ALT text
We pretty much exclusively use background images for our sites. How do I add in alt text? I tried a Google search for this issue and the best answer I could find was "Use the 'title' tag in the containing div", but that was from 2010. Is there a better way to do it? And no, we're not going to switch to using standard images, because background images are way more slick for UX.
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelGregory0 -
Is this still considered true about INTERNAL anchor text? "Penguin seems to be targeting overly aggressive anchor text (both internally and externally), especially from low-quality sources."
Recently I've heard a few people say now it's okay to be aggressive with internal linking. So a link from mydomain.com/news to mydomain/widgets can use spammy anchor text like "best green widgets in California" that are an obvious problem for links coming in from external site. Which is accurate?
On-Page Optimization | | corlin0 -
Impact of multiple links on the same page to the same url (different anchor text) ?
Hi, On our category pages, for every product we have several links pointing to the product : on the image, on the product name, on the short description, on "read more", and a javascript onclick on the entire div. Could this have a negative impact for link juice distribution, or is it counted as only 1 link with the first anchor text found on the page ? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Strelok0 -
Too many links on home page
SEOmoz crawl states I have 3 pages with too many links. My sites are hosted on Yahoo small business. One page they state is too long is the home page/ind. with 600 links to each page on the web site ( I think). Is this really a problem and how do I fix it? The other two pages are product categories that link to the products under the main product type. What I do not understand is that we have many larger product categories that SEOmoz crawl is not stating too many.
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0 -
Which pages on my site should I back link to
The majority of the back links I have been creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product categories and subcategories etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley0 -
Alt Text On Buy Buttons
Hello, On a E-commerce site with multiple buy buttons on the page (11 by Default). Should I be blocking the alt. img on these? when I use the seomoz toolbar and view my page I see this Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • along with other alt imges on page, Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hi All, New to SEOMoz, so thanks in advance for any answers! Looking at our Crawl Diagnostics and "Too Many On-Page Links" is first on the list. The site was build with the intention of users being able to quickly get to where they want to go with drop down menus (sub nav), so we built the navigation using bullet points/css. Yes, agreed there are too many links on each page from our navigation, main nav cats are 4 with sub nav about 40, but what is the best way to resolve the problem other then removing most of the links (from the sub nav drop down)? Could we just use the attribute rel=nofollow for the sub nav links? TIA
On-Page Optimization | | bmmedia0