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
-
Optimizing images on website. Is it bad to use the same alt names and keywords?
I have a webpage that I have 6 separate images showing step by step instructions of how to use our product with a sentence describing instruction inside image. I took screenshots of the instructions from the products App and uploaded them to webpage because they provide a great visual. I want to make sure I optimize correctly, can I use the same keywords for all the image names?
On-Page Optimization | | artscube.biz0 -
Putting content behind 'view more' buttons
Hi I can't find an upto date answer to this so was wondering what people's thoughts are. Does putting content behind 'view more' css buttons affect how Google see's and ranks the data. The content isn't put behind 'view more' to trick Google. In actual fact if you see the source of the data its all together, but its so that products appear higher up the page. Does anyone have insight into this. Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Question Re Cornerestone Page And Anchor Text For Internal/External Links
Suppose I create a cornerstone page with the targeted keyword "Dog Collars". I write a dozen articles on various dog collars and point a link from each article to my cornerstone page. Should the anchor text for the links from each of those articles to the cornerstone page be "Dog Collars" or should they vary, but still be relevant to "Dog Collars" for best SEO? Should half of them be "Dog Collars" and the other half various? Also, if I have 12 articles and all of the anchor text is already "Dog Collars", should I go back and change them so that they all don't say the same thing? If hope my question makes sense ... thanks in advance. I will give thumbs up for helpful responses and suggestions 😉
On-Page Optimization | | Humanovation0 -
Replacing text with images
Hello, My client is a "cheap calls" site which is offering calls to around 300 countries in the world. The pages for each country are almost the same, as they are mostly terms and conditions of making a call and explanation of the process how to do it. The copy is quite long (more than 850 words) and the country name is repeated about 26 times in the text. The country name and the phone number is the main difference between the pages, which makes them almost the same. I have recommended to add testimonials to each country and towns within the country, but I am afraid it will not dilute the similarity between the pages enough for Google to stop seeing them as duplicated. Also the client do not exactly rush to publish the testimonials for every country. The rankings are not too bad and all seems fine, but in the long term I know we need to do something. I am not sure if the client would agree to shorten up the copy, as they believe in old style seo with keyword stuffing and bolded keywords but I would like to overcome that problem with exchanging the most of the copy with an image. I would write a new copy for each page making it unique (around 2-3 paragraphs) and the rest would be an image stating exactly the same thing as the copy now to provide the same amount of info to the user. Theoretically it should help to resolve this problem, but would like to check if anyone has done something like that and if it worked/may work. Are they any other implications?
On-Page Optimization | | ThinkingJuice0 -
Internal Link Title and Anchor Text Question
So, I am kind of a newbie with all of this stuff, so please bear with me! If you have a chance to look into the domain it's www.noip.com I have checked the internal followed and 301 links. It seems like it is pulling in all of our navigation a funky way. all of those link have no data for the title and the anchor text is Home, Contact Us, Forgot Password?, ETC. Is this correct? I have tried to look into the way other websites are doing it and it seems wrong. I tried to talk to my developer, but he is not so sure. Do we simply need to make more copy on our site that has internal links within the copy with anchor text that is for keywords that I would like to be ranking for? Like Managed DNS? and then that page goes to the managed DNS page? Or what? Sorry if i am not being totally clear. Any help and advice is 110% welcomed!!! Natalie
On-Page Optimization | | vwnatalie0 -
Image with Text
Hello, I would like to use the mouse roll over with text on the over state. My question is how to make it SEO friendly? 2 different ALT ? How is the text on the over state going to be read by the searh engines? Appreciate your help! Emmanuel
On-Page Optimization | | manu450 -
Variable alt tags per page
I have a site where most of the pages don't use images. i use the logo on each page as part of the header. As the header is on each page, if i added a keyword into the alt tag, relevant to the specific page as below Would that be bad SEO? Thanks, Farky
On-Page Optimization | | FarkyRafiq0 -
What image attribute should carry "anchor text" for internal linking
Newbie question: an internal link generally should carry keyword anchor text, so if the link is actually an image, what image attribute should contain the equivalent of the anchor text
On-Page Optimization | | k3nn3dy30