Image Maps
-
Hey forum,
I'm curious about Image Maps. Few things I'm not sure about:
1. Will the links be followed? If so, will Google respect rel="nofollow"?
2. Will the image be considered 1 image? (indexed as image, etc.) Or will each map segment be treated as a separate image?
3. Any other SEO pros\cons to consider when adding an image map to an existing page?
Thanks,
Corwin.
-
Corwin - that's awesome info - thanks for posting the results of your tests!
-
For people who find this and want the final results, these are what I see at my site, YMMV:
1. Links from image maps are indeed followed, Google crawls pages that are only accessible via the image map. nofollow also seems to be respected, unless Google just decided not to index these pages for another reason, but I doubt it.
2. The images are indeed indexed for Google images as one image containing the entire map. This image gets the "alt" value of the entire image, not the individual map segments.
I hope this is useful.
-
Thank you! Great info and suggestions. I'll take your advice and post here once I get the results, so others can benefit from it.
-
1 - Can't say regarding nofollow - you could always try adding rel="nofollow" to the <area> tag and give it a shot.
Whether the links are followed depends on whether they're indexed. In my opinion, they shouldn't have any issue crawling the links. If you look at the source code of a page with an image map on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_map for example) you'll see that the links are pretty clearly listed (and in Chrome's source code view they're even hyperlinked - which alone suggests they should be crawling them just fine.)
That said, I have not tested this, and I can't find any references to actual testing done online.
If I were you, I would test this by doing the following:
- Create an image map somewhere on your site (we'll call it the Map Page).
- Link that image map to a 2nd page of the site that is not linked anywhere else on the Map Page.
- Feel free to tweet the URLs of both pages to speed up the indexation process.
- Go in to Google Webmaster Tools, and see if a link is reported to the 2nd Page from the Map Page.
- If there isn't, double check the cache date of the Map Page to see if it's after the image map was added to the page.
- If you go through that test, and GWT doesn't report a link from the Map Page to the 2nd Page, then I would go ahead and use the image map, but I would also add text links on the page to ensure your optimal site structure is in place.
- If GWT does report the link, then that seem sufficient to me, so long as you specify the alt and title text for each individual link since that will function as your anchor text.
2 - The image will probably be considered one image as far as indexing in Google Images (would be strange if they indexed portions of the image), however the alt and title attributes should behave more like multiple images.
3 - I would just do the test I described above and you should be set. Also, take a look at what popular websites using Image Maps do in this situation. National real estate listing sites are a common one for image maps IIRC.
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
-
Why are my site images hosted by secureservercdn.net?
All of my image links are hosted on secureservercdn.net. for example, if i go to a webpage, mydomain.com/blog/blog-post and right click any image with a "copy image address" the images are all linking to secureservercdn.net/blablabla rather than mydomain.com/wp-uploads/blalblabla. this cannot be good for SEO. Any ideas why this would be? My site is hosted through GoDaddy, is it on their end? Thanks, Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanMeighan0 -
Href lang in image or video XML sitemaps
Does anyone know if it is possible/recommended/not recommended to use href lang in image or video XML sitemaps? This had not crossed my mind until recently, but a client asked me this question and I couldn't find any information on this topic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisKing0 -
How to maximize CTR from Google image search?
I'm getting good, solid growth in my Google SERPs and Google search traffic now, but I do notice that 70% of my high ranking search results are images and the CTR on those is only 3-4%. All my images are illustrative and highly relevant to my travel blog, but I guess that hardly matters unless they get CTR so people see them in context. Has anyone seen or done any good research on what makes people click through on Google Image Search results? What are the key factors? How do you optimize for click-through? Is it better to watermark your images or overlay label them to increase likelihood of click-through? Thanks, Tony FYI the travel blog in question is www.asiantraveltips.com and a relevant Google search where I rank highly is "songkran 2016 phuket".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map. Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not. Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Mapping URLS - Zen Cart to Open Cart
Hey there fellow Mozers! I have an interesting situation at hand.... I am migrating a Zen Cart site to Open Cart. There are approximately 2,000 urls that need to be mapped over. ZenCart urls currently appear similar to: catalog/category-1/subcategory-3/product.htm Where OpenCart urls appear similar to: index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1234&search=product Can anyone suggest an htaccess approach or any other ideas to pull this off without too many major SERP blips? Thanks!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW0 -
Headline tag for images in Photoshelter
Hello! I use Photoshelter for my commercial photography website: http://www.ioansaidphotography.co.uk/ I'm trying to make it better re SEO and all that by filling as much information as I can. I'm using Picworkflow who give you a title, description and keywords for every picture.. But in Photoshelter's IPTC metadata editor, they put an SEO tag by Headline (essentially saying it's important) and not by title. Do you think it's good/useful/safe to use the info Picworkflow gave me for title and put it in Headline? PS: This is for the pictures individually and not the pages. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0 -
Lazy loading images effect image seo?
Im using a wordpress plugin to lazy load images so that the site speed is a lot faster. Will this mess up image seo? The code for the image looks like this (with the site taken out) [ <noscript></p> <p> </p> <p>I see it has the 1x1.gif it loads to speed up page speed but does the fact the link is to the correct place make it ok?</p> <p>Thanks for letting me know</p></noscript>](http://.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_9477.jpg)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Google Maps results doesn't show my site url but rather the maps url, why is this?
For several of my clients landing pages that show up in the Maps results the website url has been overwritten by the maps url (maps.google.com). Even though on my places page I have the correct website set up. Does anyone have any idea why they would be doing this and how I can correct it? Thanks kinldy in advance, Aaron. maps-url.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afranklin0