Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Image URLs - best practice
-
Hi - I'm assuming image URL best practice follows same principles as non image URLs (not too many files and so on) - I notice alot of web devs putting photos in subdomains, so wonder if I'm missing something (I usually avoid subdomains like the plague)!
-
From an SEO standpoint, I'd say that the URLs generally follow the same principles. Unfortunately, now that Google directly caches and displays your images, image SEO isn't worth quite the effort it used to be.
In most cases, if images are on subdomains, it's for technical reasons unrelated to SEO. People might do this for load-balancing or because they run a 3rd-party CDN, etc. There are more sophisticated ways to do this so that the images all live on one subdomain with the content, but they can be more labor intensive and more costly (and some platforms just don't support them natively).
-
Hey Luke,
You're right. The same URL principle implies on the images URL. And, I really do not think putting images in subdomains is a very good idea. You also need to avoid the typical images names like DSC4566.jpg rather you should go with something meaningful that contains your keywords like /images/Burj-Khalifa-largest-building-world.jpg ----- (I am in Dubai these days :p)
Hope this helps!
Umar
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
-
Is it best practice to have a canonical tags on all pages
The website I'm working on has no canonical tags. There is duplicate content so rel=canonicals need adding to certain pages but is it best practice to have a tag on every page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColesNathan0 -
How important is the file extension in the URL for images?
I know that descriptive image file names are important for SEO. But how important is it to include .png, .jpg, .gif (or whatever file extension) in the url path? i.e. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever vs. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever.jpg Furthermore, since you can set the filename in the Content-Disposition response header, is there any need to include the descriptive filename in the URL path? Since I'm pulling most of our images from a database, it'd be much simpler to not care about simulating a filename, and just reference an image id in my templates. Example: 1. Browser requests GET /images/123456
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud
2. Server responds with image setting both Content-Disposition, and Link (canonical) headers Content-Disposition: inline; filename="golden-retriever"
Link: <https: 123456="" example.com="" images="">; rel="canonical"</https:>1 -
Canonical URL & sitemap URL mismatch
Hi We're running a Magento store which doesn't have too much stock rotation. We've implemented a plugin that will allow us to give products custom canonical URLs (basically including the category slug, which is not possible through vanilla Magento). The sitemap feature doesn't pick up on these URLs, so we're submitting URLs to Google that are available and will serve content, but actually point to a longer URL via a canonical meta tag. The content is available at each URL and is near identical (all apart from the breadcrumbs) All instances of the page point to the same canonical URL We are using the longer URL in our internal architecture/link building to show this preference My questions are; Will this harm our visibility? Aside from editing the sitemap, are there any other signals we could give Google? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
Hi there I have a new client who has two websites: http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | turnbullholdingsltd
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content. What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain. Thanks in advance. Laurie0 -
How to See Image Metadata?
We sell 1000s of audiobooks and get our cover images and descriptions from the publisher’s sites. When I download a cover image such as this one (http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/Alex-Cross-Run-James-Patterson.jpg)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen
I always rename and re-size it before installing at our Web store. Would this process result in any publisher’s metadata in the image we use at our Web store and/or anything else Google would not like?
Is there an online utility that would allow me to see metadata in our images?0 -
Best practice for removing indexed internal search pages from Google?
Hi Mozzers I know that it’s best practice to block Google from indexing internal search pages, but what’s best practice when “the damage is done”? I have a project where a substantial part of our visitors and income lands on an internal search page, because Google has indexed them (about 3 %). I would like to block Google from indexing the search pages via the meta noindex,follow tag because: Google Guidelines: “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.” http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 Bad user experience The search pages are (probably) stealing rankings from our real landing pages Webmaster Notification: “Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site” with links to our internal search results I want to use the meta tag to keep the link juice flowing. Do you recommend using the robots.txt instead? If yes, why? Should we just go dark on the internal search pages, or how shall we proceed with blocking them? I’m looking forward to your answer! Edit: Google have currently indexed several million of our internal search pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HrThomsen0 -
Canonical URLs and Sitemaps
We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names. So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category. And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL? In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345. This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo0 -
Url with hypen or.co?
Given a choice, for your #1 keyword, would you pick a .com with one or two hypens? (chicago-real-estate.com) or a .co with the full name as the url (chicagorealestate.co)? Is there an accepted best practice regarding hypenated urls and/or decent results regarding the effectiveness of the.co? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joechicago0