Can appropriate alt text be considered keyword stuffing?

[RichAlbanese]

Hi all,

I just used the Moz page grader on this page:  http://giavan.com/collections/earrings/pearl

for the keyword "pearl earrings".  It's grading it a "B" and the most important issue is "Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document".  The keyword appears once in the title, once in the H1 tag, twice in the body and 31 times in alt image text.  We've recently been taking the time to add alt text to all product images by simply copying the product name.  So if the product name is "Pearl & Crystal Beaded Drop Earrings", that text is copied and pasted as the product image's alt text.  This seemed like the best way because it's highly descriptive and obviously, quick to implement.  But if search engines see this as keyword stuffing, I guess we should rethink it.

I don't know why Google would have a problem with this - it doesn't negatively affect the user experience and clearly those alt tag are serving a specific purpose.  Still, the Moz grader doesn't seem to like it so if anyone knows the best way to handle this (or ignore it?) I'd really appreciate your help.  Thanks!

[CommT]

I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the page grader looks at the ratio of keywords to other text, not just a simple case of counting the number of times a keyword is used on the page - a 200 word page with 15 instances of the keyword would look stuffed, but a 2000 word page with 15 instances of the keyword (and its variations) would not look over stuffed - so long as you don't start listing keywords for the sake of it (this happens a lot with local optimisation - wood flooring london, wood flooring manchester, wood flooring birmingham, etc etc - yuk!)

Hope this helps explain my suggestion.

[RichAlbanese]

That's correct, each alt tag takes the product name, so all the images have different alt text.  I think my question really comes down to - Why is the Moz page grader considering this keyword stuffing?

Increasing the text to alt tag ratio won't reduce the number of instances of "pearl earrings", so the page grader will still count the instances of this keyword and consider that number too high.  At this point, I'm not going to worry about it.  But it seems like descriptive image alt text shouldn't count as keyword stuffing because these are the best possible descriptions of the images.

[CommT]

To get this clear in my head, are you saying that your alt tags take the product name, not that all alt tags are identical?

If the former, then I think you've done the right thing (though I am keen to be corrected if I am wrong) because the reason alt tags exist is to describe the pictures on the page so that people who are visually impaired can still interpret the page correctly and enjoy a similar experience to those of us that can see them.

If your alt tags are identical to one another then you have got it wrong! Make sure your alt tags describe the content on your image.

If the Moz tool is saying your page is stuffed full of 'pearl earrings' then you may need to increase the text to alt tag ratio (seeing as it's the pearl earrings in alt tags that appear to be the problem). Make sure all your product descriptions are unique, as this can be beneficial.

Hope this helps!

Amelia xx

[MoosaHemani]

Ok, if you are including the same name on images, they not to do that as image name is also considered as the part of the content.

On your website it might look good but images normally get crawled in Google Images and when you are putting the same name on all images it will be difficult for Google understand what image is for what and it might spam the results in Google images for that key phrases.

Hope I cleared my point.