SEO benefits of terms used in Alt-tag, image name, page title
-
On our website, we have products that come in different colours, and we have created a different SKU for each one .e.g. our Acacia Evening Dress comes in 3 different colours (black, blue and red) - Acacia Evening Dress Black (J7048BLK), Acacia Evening Dress Blue (J7048RB), Acacia Evening Dress Red (J7048R).
Would it be beneficial for SEO if on the image Alt-tag we used the terms 'Jadore J7048 Red Acacia dress', 'Jadore J7048 Black Acacia dress' and 'Jadore J7048 Blue Acacia dress', because 'Acacia' is the internal name we have given to this dress, not the name provided by the label, Jadore, as more customers would search for terms such as 'black dress' or 'Jadore J7048'? Can we use the same terms in the Alt-tag on the image and the page title? How important is the Alt-tag in searching?
-
Ecommerce marketplace for local classes here. We have over 3K SKUs on the site and I'd agree with what Dimitrii suggested. As an add-on to what he said, I'd also strongly suggest that you ensure the site's overall SEO architecture is well positioned to rank on a variety of keywords (depending on what your keyword research says of course).
For example,
-
Our home page targets the broadest keywords (local classes etc.)
-
Category pages targets 2nd tier keywords (baking classes, cooking classes etc)
-
Product pages targets long-long-tail keywords (macaron baking class in the east)
I find that this approach works very well for ecommerce sites with a broad range of categories. In your case, Evening Dresses might be a category of it's own, with each SKU page ranking for its own long-tail keywords. As Dimitrii mentioned as well, image search does contribute a fair amount of traffic on it's own, and we've even received backlinks from site-owners who found our image via image search, and credited our site with a backlink
It's best to optimize the images you post up to be as descriptive as possible. Being an ecommerce site owner, I personally know your pain with hundreds if not thousands of SKUs, but cumulatively, it does make an impact and will help!
-
-
Hi there.
You sure can add whatever you want. The question is about if it's going to help your SEO. If you going to have "buy online in australia" in title, meta, content, alt-tags then it is going to be overstuffing.
What you should be doing is "theme-ing" pages. Each page should target 1-2 related keywords with supportive content for those keywords (lets say pictures with related names, titles, alt-tags etc).
ALWAYS think of user experience. As I mentioned before - alt-tags are for when img does load or for visually impaired. So, if i get "best wedding dress store" instead of image of a dress - that's not cool. However, it would be ok to have something like "designer wedding dress - online store in sydney". Basically, you can incorporate descriptive, promotional and seo words together.
Hope this helps.
-
Dear Dmitrii,
Thank you so much for your reply. It is very helpful.
We are a bridal store selling wedding dresses and bridesmaids dresses. We are wanting to know how much our URL and page title can differ, whilst still optimising SEO.
For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the url is wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title?
For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"?
Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, apart from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing?
In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag?
Thank you.
-
Hi there.
The purpose of alt tag is to describe the image if doesn't load and for visually impaired users, who use screen reader programs. So, i would go with more descriptive "black dress" than not-telling-me-anything "jadore 1234".
Also alt tag is used a lot in image search, so, if your business can benefit from image search, then it would make sense to include a little more details in alt tag than "black dress". Maybe something like "affordable jadore flared black dress - 'company name'".
Hope this helps.
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
-
Does Autoplay video effect SEO?
I'm trying to find out if autoplay videos (muted) on the homepage effect seo in anyway? Currently our site ranks around position four on the first page, but we have noticed one competitor we monitor have long auto playing videos on their sites and were wondering if they are a good or bad factor? Any info you would like to share would be great. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | 5TW0 -
Using Facebook for Places page
I have been using Facebook for my website for some of my client, Previously it use to get ranked fast and I have one of my client of the very top for one of my clinets main keyword. I took another the same Nitch but in a different location, but they don't seem to be getting ranked.
Image & Video Optimization | | joeuglyhat0 -
Local Targeting without the city’s name
Here’s an interesting one for you guys: We show up on page 1 for “Edmonton web design,” (our website is http:web3.ca), however when you search for just “web design” in our city, we don’t seem to show up at all. I know Google is now placing a higher percentage or local companies in a search. So my question is: how can we show up better for a local search that is just “web design”? Does this just come down to domain authority & content or are there other key local factors at play?
Image & Video Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Local SEO
To date local SEO seems to be the weak part of my SEO efforts. Are there any good references for local SEO?
Image & Video Optimization | | casper4340 -
Best practice using Video to increase website pagerank?
Goal: Leverage videos to get links and traffic back to website not video hosting platform site (e.g. YouTube) to generate website leads **Issue: ** If we place a video on a website using video YouTube embed code and video sitemap for the crawlers to index our video DOES show up in search results BUT that link goes back to YouTube. Great for increasing views on YouTube but not increasing link popularity for client website. Question: What are recommendations / best practice for SEO (such as using another player like Viddler, etc.) that will get video results from search engines back to the website? We want to leverage videos to build links and generate leads to client site.
Image & Video Optimization | | jfeitlinger0 -
SEO, backlink help needed.
Does any one know best SEO and backlink service that uses white hat method. I dont have anytime for optimization. Im looking for one way backlinking and on-page and off page optimization. Will appreciate help.
Image & Video Optimization | | tanveers0 -
Correct image alt-txt length
Hi all, I am new to SEO, and just getting up and running optimising our company's website. We have a lot of images of our products on the website, and I would like to optimise the alt-text. Is there a recommended maximum length for alt-text, as there is for title tags etc? Thanks in advance, Gareth
Image & Video Optimization | | gdavies090319770 -
Multi-site listings in Google Local/Place pages
I've had problems with a client that is a local medical center with multiple sites/addresses. We've created a Place Page for each location and linked it to the location page on the client's website that matches the address on the Place page. But that means we're not linking to the medical center's home page -- and Google Places doesn't like that. I know this because after we'd owner-verified each Place Page, Google went in and just changed the website link that was a deep link to a location page and replaced it with a link to the home page. But now there's not an address match. How should we handle this? Related question: Does it make sense to claim a separate listing in Yelp and other local directories for each of the separate locations since they each have a unique address? Will Yelp & other local directories allow for links to non-home pages on the client's website?
Image & Video Optimization | | DenisL0