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
-
Hi,
In regards to keyword stuffing; yes it can be an issue in alt tags and personally I believe it is a spam signal to the search engines.
For example, a good alt tag would be along the lines of:
'A young couple stood in front of the Egyptian pyramids whilst on holiday'
However, you will find some people will stuff and go with:
'Egypt, Egyptian, Egypt Holidays, travel to Egypt, flights to Egypt, see the pyramids' etc
It's fairly easy for Google, and your customers, to see that you are trying to manipulate the rankings.
The alt tags should be a simple description of the image, however you need to be SEO savy enough to include your keywords as well.
In regards to your site; if your competitor isn't using alt tags on their buttons, then it's a fantastic opportunity for you to take the lead. It's difficult to tell you what would/wouldn't work, but if you work on the lines of offering a genuine description then you will be fine.
If your site is selling events, then it makes sense to explain in the alt tag that this is a buy button for X event on X date.
Again, with a little bit of code trickery you can have this created dynamically so it's on a quick job and will happen automatically whenever you add a product/event.
In regards to making words/phrases bold or italic; there is no SEO benefit or risk here so it should be simply down to what looks best and what portrays the information in the best way for your visitors.
Thanks,
David
-
Hello!
Next to each buy button I have a description of the venue that the event is taking place at, as well as the date and time, Could I use these on the page? I looked at a competitor in the same field and I cannot see any alt tags on their BUY BUTTONS, I only see bold/strong next to event date, and italic next to venue names. Would this help? Do I have to worry about keyword stuffing at all on with these too.
Thanks so much for all of your help!!!
-
Blue Widget 2143 was just an example product, without knowing what kind of products you sell it was the best I could do. If you sold soccer jerseys, your alt tag could be 'buy button for the 2012 Manchester United home shirt'. This would pick up more search traffic, as well as make your website more accessible to customers. The whole point of the alt tag is to provide a description of the image you are displaying. 'Buy now' tells neither Google nor your customers any information, and you are missing out on a great opportunity to please both. Depending what language/CMS your website is built on, you will be able to insert a bit of code that dynamically creates a suitable alt tag depending on the product. So whatever page/product template currently instructs the alt tag to be 'buy now', would instead instruct a dynamic name to be generated along the format of 'buy button for <product name="">' Cheers</product>
-
Blue Widget 2143 was just an example product, without knowing what kind of products you sell it was the best I could do. If you sold soccer jerseys, your alt tag could be 'buy button for the 2012 Manchester United home shirt'. This would pick up more search traffic, as well as make your website more accessible to customers. The whole point of the alt tag is to provide a description of the image you are displaying. 'Buy now' tells neither Google nor your customers any information, and you are missing out on a great opportunity to please both. Depending what language/CMS your website is built on, you will be able to insert a bit of code that dynamically creates a suitable alt tag depending on the product. So whatever page/product template currently instructs the alt tag to be 'buy now', would instead instruct a dynamic name to be generated along the format of 'buy button for <product name="">' Cheers</product>
-
Im sorry Blue Widget 2143? I did a bit of searching but didnt come up with much as far as a definition? Should each buy button contain some type of alt tag? I have Literally thousands of pages on the e-commerce site, all of which contain inventory with Buy Buttons. Would you suggest all of them have an alt tag that describe the page?
Ex- If page is about running shoes, specifically Orange running shoes should all of the buy buttons say "buy orange running shows now? Would that be considered keyword stuffing?
Thank You
-
Hi,
By definition, the alt tag is there to give a description of the image for users who aren't able to view it (visually impaired users, or visitors with restricted browsers or speeds).
In regards to the search engines, it's an opportunity for you to tell them about the content of an image which the crawlers simply can't see. This gives you two opportunities; firstly to let the search engines know that the media content of your page is relevant for a search query. Secondly, images with a full description will stand a much better chance of ranking in image search, which can be a rich traffic source for you.
For both circumstances, the alt tag should be descriptive and a genuine reflection of the content of the image. A alt description of 'buy now' doesn't add any value to either your visitors or your SEO efforts, as it tells them very little.
I would recommend using an alt tag along the lines of 'buy button for the Blue Widget 2143'.
This gives visitors a full description of the image, as well as helping the search engines know that your site is relevant for the Blue Widget 2143.
This would also solve your issue of duplicate alt descriptions that are adding no value to your site. If you followed the format of 'buy button for the <product name="">' it would give you unique descriptions that genuinely benefit your SEO campaign.</product>
I definitely wouldn't recommend blocking the alt tags, this would be totally shunning a serious on-page ranking factor.
Thanks,
David
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
-
Another anchor text question
Hi, We are updating a site and creating new separate pages for each coworker (app. 50 coworkers). Each page will include picture, short description, cv and also a subtitle/"keyword list" called: "areas of expertise". Each keyword (area of expertise) has it´s own in depth page on the subject, would it be wise to anchor text -link these? or is this something that is likely to be picked up by google as spam? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Agguk
/Anders0 -
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 -
How to organise subpages for good SEO content without duplicate text?
We are working on many subpages for our services. We have original content for each page however there are few text which we need to always duplicate like: Contact sales window, why to choose us window, supported files etc. What's the best way to do this so it's not consider as duplicated text. Should we redirected it or add it as a picture and always change name of the picture? Thank you Lukas
On-Page Optimization | | Lukas-ST0 -
Optimal amount of alt and title tags on a landing page?
Hey guys! We are preparing a few product landing pages and want to make sure the alt and title tags are done correctly. We looked at landing pages from Apple and Google Nexus and found that they had very few alt and title tags (or none). Are we missing something here? Should there be an alt for every image and title for every link?
On-Page Optimization | | TVape0 -
IMG ALT tags - should they be the same or the product title?
I have about 300 products. Should I make all my IMG ALT tags with my keywords, such as sea glass jewelry, sea glass necklace, sea glass bracelets? Or, should I make them what their title is, some of which do not pertain to the keyword, such as By the Sea. Some of my products do have keywords in them, but not all. I am hesitant on changing all the titles, as almost all URLs are indexed.
On-Page Optimization | | tiffany11030 -
Internal link text
Hi With internal links, should I make sure to always use the same anchor text im trying to rank the page for? For example im having a tidy up and have realised im linking to the same page in multiple blog posts using different anchor text. Whats the rule of thumb here? Thanks Chris
On-Page Optimization | | mrcsleonard1 -
Anchor text in Ecommerce site without relevant pages
I'm posting articles to my e-commerce site and just wondering about the anchor text links within the posts. I don't have relevant static pages but the items do come up in a search query. For example i don't have a specific page for red wine but if a user searched for red wine it would give a search query URL. Should I use that search URL query as my anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | acs1110 -
Read More button
Hey everyone We have a read more button always at the end of the 4th paragraph. We used it so we always have the Photos section within the area of view... http://www.surfcampinportugal.com/ Does this harm our SEO? Thanks in advance...
On-Page Optimization | | Rapturecamps0