Link Product Thumb & Product Name with same anchor link?
-
We have an issue on one of our sites we're monitoring a campaign for that seems to have TOO many links on each page. I think the biggest reason is that each product listing on each category page has two separate anchor links into that page. One for the thumb and one for the name. So even though there should only be 60-70 links on each category page, that amount is being inflated because each product listing technically is being split into two separate links.
Question is, should I place the thumbnail and name within the same anchor link? We do this on a lot of other sites we operate, but I'm not sure what's a better strategy. It would seem to me that it would be better to have a single anchor link that shares the thumb and product name.
-
It is unusual to endorse one of the shortest answers on the page, but Axel is to-the-point and, IMO, correct in this case. You don't want to paginate too heavily because that creates more clicks to get to all of your products. In fact, Google even recommends using a View All canonical page if it doesn't affect performance (load time) too much.
The first link anchor is what counts so I respectfully disagree with dittoeffect, unless you were to link to the image on the product page from the image on the category page using a Named Anchor hashtag (could be a good thing to test).
You don't want a bunch of iframes on your category page either. Keep it simple. You run an honest eCommerce site, not an uber-competitive affiliate website where you have to put links into a redirect script that goes through a directory that's blocked in the robots.txt file, etc...
Make the alt text and link text the same unless you are testing the named anchor link idea mentioned above.
And as Alan Gray said, test. These are all just opinions based on experience until you test.
-
Whatever you do, you should test and measure.
Only then will you know if it makes a difference.
There don't seem to be any definitive answers.
After you do that, you could tell others the results of your experiments.
-
too much overhead in a productive space.
I would go Text & picutre in one link
-
Ted, why don't you add pagination to your product pages?
You might list 10 items on a page and link the thumbnail image and product title to the item details page without any issues.
-
This is a really good question. Actually what I think is best is actually keeping the links separate and using the appropriate and most descriptive text for the page the text link points to and using the next best phrase in the image for the alt text. ex if you have a product called "big red dog house" then that would be the text link anchor text and the image alt text would be "large red dog house".
To solve the issue of too many links you should create subcategories within the categories to display fewer listings per page to reduce the number of links.
Now if you are worried about burring products make sure to divide the categories as evenly as you can so they do not go too deep. So if you have 70 products that were on the "dog houses" page try to make the dog houses page lead to a page with two links to categories "small dog houses" with about half the products and "large dog houses" with the other half. this way you create a tree of sorts (you can make many categories). The idea is to layer your navigation to guide the user towards what they want to find while structuring your navigation to give your products the attention they deserve from and seo stand point.
hope this helps
-
Putting the product name & image in the same anchor is the best bet. You can put the image anchor in javascript without taking the image out of the search index.
-
Yeah, but I want the image to be linked. I don't want to do away with the image links in the search engines eyes. I just want to link to both the most seo friendly way possible. That's why I figured placing the thumbnail and the product name within the same anchor link could possibly be the best bet. Our images actually rank fairly well in google images so doing what you suggest would be suicide in that respect, either for the image, or for the anchor text which is likely way more important.
-
You could make one of the links a javascript link or embed in an iframe and exclude the iframe files from robots.
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
-
Snippet showing as domain name with apostrophe, instead of page title when searching for the domain name.
Hi, We have an issue with one of our websites, with the snippet dispaying differently in Google serps when searching for the domain or the website name rather than a search term. When searching for a search term, the page title shows as expected, but when searching for the site by the domain name either with or without the tld, it shows the snippet as the domain name with an apostrophe at the end. Domain is subli.co.uk Thanks in advance for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | K3v1n0 -
Use External Links
Hey 🙂 I noticed when analysing my pages that Moz gives the following advice about adding external links to my articles; "On any page specifically targeting a keyword, link externally to at least one (and possibly more than one) relevant, trusted resources as a best practice." As a small business I work pretty damn hard to get visitors to my website, so why on earth would I want to go to all that trouble just to send them away again to a trusted resouce? Secondly, what exactly is a "trusted resource"? Can I simply use search and use the top competitor, for example Moz or Wikipedia and does the anchor need to be an exact match or will a partial suffice. I say this because I already have the top spot for my longtail, so an exact match would be pointless. And lastly, I notice that pretty much all quality sites use external links to open in the same window i.e. not target=_blank, I never thought of it before today, but now that I'm considering using external linking in my articles I guess it's important to know the answer - i.e. Is this a best practice and does this give any seo benefit? Cheers, Lee :)
On-Page Optimization | | LeeC0 -
Image naming best practices?
While I have found many good sources of information for naming images for SEO purposes, I'm having trouble finding an up-to-date, exhaustive and authoritative source for image names, alt tags, etc. For instance... Max characters for image name? Max hyphens? How descriptive should you be? "ice-cream-flavors-icon_._jpg" or "ice-cream-flavors.jpg" or simply "ice-cream.jpg" How similar should the image name, alt text and page title be? At what point are you overusing a keyword? Rules to follow? So much more, but you get the idea! Anyone have a good reference or an answer to all things related to images and SEO? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OSD0 -
Product titles
Hi guys, I'm starting to sell sofas and furniture online in Australia. Many USA companies just use the key ranking words as the Product Title i.e. "Ultra -Modern black leather sectional sofa with bookcase". Even if they have 100s of products. But in Australia they just use the model name, such as "The York", "The Boston", etc. Cause it does create a nicer picture and a neater look on the main page. I was wondering how important this practice is in improving search ranking? is it spammy? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | cowhidesdirect0 -
Internal Links
I have a page that I am working to rank. Open Site Explorer shows that I have 69 internal links and a competitive site (ranked #4) has 822 internal links. The page I am looking to rank is on my main navigation menu so it should have an incoming link from every page on my site. My site is 6 years old and has 497 pages indexed according to Google Webmaster Tools. What do I need to do to improve the number of internal links that are being recognized?
On-Page Optimization | | CoachingToolbox0 -
Weighing costs & benefits for domain name change.
I've got a site that is under consideration for a domain change, however I have plenty of concerns about our particular situation. I'd love to explain my scenario and then get some feedback! The domain in question is beverlys.com and has been up and running since 1996 (almost 16 years), so it has advantages in that it's a long standing trusted domain. For the majority of that time however, the site was mostly a simple static informational site to accommodate a brick and mortar business. Then starting in 2009 the site underwent the change to become an e-commerce site. Since then we have been working to compete with other sites in the same industry and attempting to rank well in organic results. In particular our business sells fabric, so "fabric" is one keyword we measure in various way to get an idea where we stand with the competition. Over time we have had ups and downs while ranking for "fabric", specifically. At our peak we ranked 16th in Google in September 2011, and 18th as recent as January 2012. However since that time we have fallen off the map in Google's results. Currently we are around the 100th result! Though in Yahoo! and Bing we continue to show strongly with organic rankings hovering between 15-20. I can only theorize that something in the last few rounds of Google's algorithm updates has punished us and thus far have not been able to identity the issue or find any resolution. So, in response, one of the options on the table is to use a new domain name that specifically incorporates the keyword that is important to us. Unfortunately our current domain does not use "fabric" so we would use something like beverly-fabrics.com or what-have you. There is so much potential for disaster in switching domain names that I'm having a hard time considering this as a viable option. But at this point I don't want to close any doors. We want to have the best chance at long term success and if a domain name change would help in that we would do it. I'd love to hear anyone's opinions, recommendations or advice about our situation!
On-Page Optimization | | dickslee230 -
Should I include my help desk link?
My website has a link to our help desk. I was considering a 'do not follow' since I don't think it should be included. However, are there any benefits to including it since there are A LOT of articles and pages on our help desk (though it's aimed at our curent customers, not new or potential customers)?
On-Page Optimization | | flightoffice0 -
It has been recommended that we remove the number of links in our footer, should we?
We have a pretty user friendly footer with almost an entire site-map on it. It's similar to many e-commerce company footers, and I think it's useful to the user. SEO professionals have recommended that to reduce the number of links on any given page on our site we should compress our footer and only show the headers, thus removing many links. This in my opinion is a disservice to the user and makes the site not look as good, but maybe it's a good idea for SEO to get rid of so many links per page? What do you think? (pic attached) Screen_shot_2011-08-05_at_3.54.53_PM.png
On-Page Optimization | | aran0881