Using Images Instead of Text to Control Keywords on Page
-
We have recently updated a key page on our website. It is a template page that is used many times to display search results. The words "price", "revenue", and "cash flow", "not disclosed" are used for each listing on the page -- to minimize their impact on keyword density on the page we used images for these words. Here you can see some examples:
- http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Florida-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx
- http://www.businessbroker.net/City/Los Angeles-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx
- http://www.businessbroker.net/Industry/Auto_Car_Wash-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx
You will note these words on this page are images and not regular text.
We are certainly not doing this to "dupe" the visitors or Google -- we just want to ensure that each page has keywords pertinent to what the page is about.
Bottom line question -- is this an OK practice? Are we running any risk with Google by doing this? I'm particularly nervous these days with all of the Google changes.
Your thoughts and guidance on this issue would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
- MWM
-
Hi Khem - Thank-you for your response, I appreciate it. - Matt M
-
Hi Cyrus - I appreciate the response - makes good sense. We will be doing a comprehensive review of our title tags and making necessary adjustments so they don't appear "spammy" -- good suggestion! Thanks again, appreciate it. - Matt M
-
Hi MWM,
It's completely natural for websites to have certain words repeating over and over. Consider the typical listing page for Amazon - (Price, reviews, etc) Google encounters this all the time and it's natural to assume these words don't really play into ranking considerations. So I honestly don't see anything to gain by adding images.
That said, I doubt the images hurt you very much... I simply don't believe they are worth the effort.
On another note, you might want to take a look at your title tags. We've seen Google get more aggressive about cracking down on keyword stuffed title tags. Repeating your keywords more than once or twice is a definite red flag. For example, I might take this:
"Florida Business for Sale Ads - Florida Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker"
and turn it into
"Florida Business for Sale Ads - Buy & Sell at BusinessBroker.net"
...needs a little refining, but you get the idea. Best of luck!
-
Specifically in your case, these things appear be genuine so you may use either image or text. Google will not harm your website
But make sure to use meaningful and informative description for all your listing instead of focusing on keywords but that doesn't mean that you can't use keywords if required
-
I believe the following article can answer all your queries, which you even have not asked.
From my side, as long as the words/keywords are used genuinely, you really need not to worry about that. There is no such think called Keyword Density, Reciprocal links as long as they are natural and genuine.
Read more: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-myths-that-scare-seos-but-shouldnt-whiteboard-friday
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
-
Too many SEO changes needed on a page. Create a new page?
I've been doing some research on a keyword with Page Optimization. I'm finding there's a lot of changes suggested. I'm wondering that because of the amount of changes required is it better to create a new page entirely from scratch that has all the suggestions implemented OR change the current page? Thanks, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris29181 -
How To Optimize A Page For Multiple Keywords
Hi Guys, In this video by Brian Dean he talks about how to go about optimising for multiple keywords. He basically said the main factors for optimising a page for multiple keywords are the following: Identify other keywords with same search intent as your primary keyword. Add them to title tag strategically, don't stuff them in there. Add as many of those keywords as h2 tags into the content, again when it makes sense. Are there any other more advanced ways you can use to optimize a page for multiple keywords with same search intent that could be good? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts110 -
WordPress – parent category "blog" instead of regular "post page"?
In WordPress you normally show you blog posts on: Your home page. Your "posts page" (configurable in the Reading Settings) I want to do neither and have a third option instead: Assign a parent category called "blog" for all posts, and show the latest posts on that category's archive page. For the readers, the experience will be 100% the same as a regular "posts page". The UI, permalinks, and breadcrumbs will be 100% the same. But, I have heard that the "posts page" is important for Google for indexing and understanding your blog. So is is smarter SEO-wise to use a "posts page" instead of a parent category named "blog"? What negative effects might there be, if I have no "posts page" and just use the parent category "blog" instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikolasB0 -
What to do when your home page an index for a series of pages.
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com The home page is the index itself and the 1st page http://www.southernwhitewater.com/nz-adventure-tours-whitewater-river-rafting-hunting-fishing My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top to a picture. rel= canonical? Any help would be great!! http://www.southernwhitewater.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
How important is my code to text ratio on web pages?
I've been getting mixed reviews on this and I'm trying to figure out whether this is something I should be concerned with. We have a higher than recommended amount of code, relative to "content" but not by a crazy amount. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | absoauto0 -
Alt image tags , shoud i reupload my site images as i never optimized right first time?
Hi guys i own a photographic website. www.hemeravisuals.co.uk And when I created it , i wasn't aware of the world of SEO , alt tags and labelling your images etc...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hemeravisuals
Would it be wise to reupload my sites images (100 in total) as I cannot rename the files on my wordpress site but it does allow me to add alt text , captions etc?Or just add the data i can to the images allready on the site? Would it be worthwhile in terms of search and pagerank?0 -
Varying Internal Link Anchor Text with Each New Page Load
I'm asking for people's opinions on varying internal anchor text. Before you jump in and say, "Oh yes, varying your anchor text is always a good idea", let me explain. I'm not talking about varying anchor text on different links scattered throughout a site. We all know that is a wise thing to do for a variety of reasons that have been covered in many places. What I'm talking about is including semi-useful links below the fold and then varying the anchor text with each page load. Each time Googlebot crawls a page, it sees different anchor text for each link. That way, Googlebot is seeing, for example, 'san diego bars', 'taverns in san diego', 'san diego clubs', and 'pubs in san diego' all pointing to a San Diego bar/tavern/club/pub page. I'm wondering if there is value in this approach. Will it help a site rank well for multiple search queries? Could it potentially be better than static anchor text as it may help Google better understand the targeted page? Is it a good way to protect a large site with a huge number of internal links from Penguin? To summarize, we're talking about the impact of varying the anchor text on a single page with each page load as opposed to varying the anchor text on different pages. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanOD0 -
202 error page set in robots.txt versus using crawl-able 404 error
We currently have our error page set up as a 202 page that is unreachable by the search engines as it is currently in our robots.txt file. Should the current error page be a 404 error page and reachable by the search engines? Is there more value or is it a better practice to use 404 over a 202? We noticed in our Google Webmaster account we have a number of broken links pointing the site, but the 404 error page was not accessible. If you have any insight that would be great, if you have any questions please let me know. Thanks, VPSEO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VPSEO0