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
-
Hero Banners & Live Text Q?
Hey Guys N' Girls. What are the benefits of having live selectable text on your home page slider banners? I understand that as live text Google can read the text, so there are keyword and relevancy benefits. But the question is how much impact on ranking this will have? The reason I ask is our website solution can add live text but the fonts are limited to 9 basic fonts. We would like to use more jazzy fonts in the banner, but our only option then is to use a jpeg or png. Thanks for your responses. Owen
On-Page Optimization | | BrunelOne0 -
Ideal number of keywords for a text
Hi there! I am trying to figure out what the ideal number of my queries per copy (400 words) would be. My queries are: lg dryer repair (volume search: 851-1k)
On-Page Optimization | | kirupa
lg washer repair (volume search: 851-1k)
lg appliance repair (volume search: 851-1k)
lg repair service (volume search: 501-850)
lg washing machine repair (volume search: 501-850)
lg dishwasher repair (volume search: 201-500)
lg appliance repair (volume search: 851-1k) How many times do you think I might use each of those quires? Is there any algorithm to figure that out? I would appreciate very much any thought you could share with me.0 -
How many Anchor text i can make on One page.
I would like to have clear answer in numbers i.e. 1, 2, 3, or 4 etc. of how many Anchor text i can make on One page.????
On-Page Optimization | | 1akal0 -
Good idea to use hidden text for SEO purposes due to picky clients not allowing additional content?
I do SEO for eCommerce websites both in-house and for clients. A few of our clients want increased rankings but are not willing to allow us to make the changes internally to help make that happen. One of which is adding content to the webpages since 90% of them have very little to none. I have a couple clients that are extremely picky about what can be seen on their eCommerce website. They have the site setup the way they want it but it is not SEO friendly in the slightest. The pages (including homepage) have little to no content, and the only things they want changed are things visitors CANNOT see on the webpages (META, ALT Tags etc). The tactic i am wanting to use is often used by spammers but i have a legitimate reason to use this and wanted to know if this would be a good idea. They are wanting to target fairly competitive keywords but are unwilling to allow any on-page changes to add any information and keywords to help with rankings. I was thinking about adding text behind images or hide the text in whatever ways to prevent the end user from viewing it (except for the search engines). My idea was simply to add a paragraph or two of content for the search engines purely to help in ranking because they have a lot of pages that have zero content except for product image and title listings. Is this tactic recommended or does anyone have any other ideas for these type of situations. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | VITALBGS
Stephen0 -
Why would meta description text get added to the meta HTTP-EQUIV tag?
For one of my clients, the people coding the site added the meta description content to the HTTP-EQUIV tag as part of the "name" attribute. Curious if anyone has seen this practice before?! I notified them that the description meta tag was not coded properly -- the search engines do not interpret the "name" attribute and the text that is in it. Anyway, It looks like: **<meta http-equiv="<a class="attribute-value">Content-Type</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">text/html; charset=utf-8</a>" name="... <a class="attribute-value">and services. ... .</a>" />**
On-Page Optimization | | alankoen1230 -
Keyword Stuffing in Alt Tags!
Hello, I have on a main page over 50 images. The first page i want to optimize it for MAINKW (let's say). Now, if i use in the alt tags "MAINKW KW1", "MAINKW KW2", "MAINKW KW3" ... "MAINKW KW50" then Google may say that i stuff the MAINKW in that page? Those images are reprezentative for main Categories and i have direct links to them from the main page with the anchors KW1, KW2...KW50.
On-Page Optimization | | VertiStudio0 -
On site optimization - anchor text in body text
Hi I am learning SEO from scratch and am only a couple of weeks in. My wife has just started a website selling children clothes. In the left bar there are links to the different producers. Clicking it takes you to the products from that producer. In the body text om the main page ( epleskrinet.no) the same producers are mentioned. By time i need to opitmize for all of these. Is there any point in making them anchor text - taking them to the same URL as is given in the side bar ? Or will it get discounted ? Dan Laerum
On-Page Optimization | | danlae0 -
Better for SEO to use a hyphen in the name of a website to break up text?
To maximize SEO, would it be better to use a hyphen between two words in the name of a website? For instance, www.londonparis.com or www.london-paris.com. Would it be OK to use www.LondonParis.com Many thanks in advance, Ricardo
On-Page Optimization | | RicardoMello0