Thumbnail-based navigation like YouTube Sidebar - they don't use ALT tag
-
Notice on the YouTube sidebar, each video has a thumbnail and a title.
But, for the ALT tag, YouTube simply uses the word "thumbnail".
In the past, i was using a keyword phrase for my thumbnail ALT tag. I thought I was being clever. But is this superflous?
We note that the A tag on the YouTube items, encompasses the SPAN that is the video + title. Does Google associate the text of the title as valid "anchor text" despite the existance of other info in that span --- e.g. like View Count and the User Name of the video creator?
Thanks!
-
well, i read a post that said that, the second link to a page has no anchor text value.
e.g. if the anchor text DOGS, links to pageX, and the anchor text DOG COLLARS links to pagex (further down), then only the first anchor text will be applied to the link vector.
So, on a typical YouTube style right nav bar, you have the thumbnail and the title clickable. Given that the title text would have no value, i simply made the thumbnail the only clickable element on the whole right nav bar assembly.
Good idea of bad idea?
Thanks!
-
I like to use ALT tags to add variations of keywords which are relevant to my page but my client may wish to otherwise avoid.
Someone recently shared their experience of working with a client who ran a retirement home. The client was determined to not use the phrase "retirement home" to refer to his own business. So his website can talk about "senior living home" and other phrases, but we recognize as SEOs "retirement home" is a very important phrase which needs to be associated with the site.
By using ALT tags we can work the phrase "retirement home" into the site. The description is accurate and helpful.
-
But, for the ALT tag, YouTube simply uses the word "thumbnail".
lol... It is really hard to look down the microscope, every day, at every employee.
-
Google is one of the least SEO compliant companies online. Sad, but true. Worse, ALT attributes are first and foremost for screen-readers -devices that allow visually impaired people to understand what an image is about.
ALT attributes do have value in SEO - it's not massive, yet it doesn't hurt if you use them properly.
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
-
Hreflang Tags - error: 'en' - no return tags
Hello, We have recently implemented Hreflang tags to improve the findability of our content in each specific language. However, Webmaster tool is giving us this error... Does anyone know what it means and how to solve it? Here I attach a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/a4AsqLNtF6J Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Is it ok to use H1 tags in breadcrumbs?
A client has an e-commerce site and she doesn't want a page title on the products page. She has breadcrumbs though. Her website developer suggests putting the H1 on the breadcrumbs. So: products> Gifts > picture frame with h1 tags round the word "picture frame". Is this ok to do? Or is it a bad thing for SEO purposes? Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Why isn't my site not searchable from google?
I am having a hard time figuring out why is it that when I search for my website name, it didn't show up in google's search result? Here's a link to my site. I've been twiddling for days looking for answers in my google webmaster tools. Here's a link of the crawl stats from google webmaster tool. As you can see it is actually crawling some pages. However my looking at my indexed status, I am getting 0 as you can see here (http://cl.ly/image/3G1R1p0b3k1P). I've double checked for my robots.txt and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary there. I am not blocking anything. Any ideas why?
Technical SEO | | herlamba0 -
For an image which is in the CSS and not the HTML, can you add an alt tag?
I would like to improve SEO on a page with three big images, which are currently hosted in the CSS. The sample I am working with is at http://xquisitevents.com/about-us/ and I put my cursor over the big picture of the wedding dress with bouquet, I inspected the element and saw this code in a div tag: #upperleft { background-image:url(images/AboutTopLeft.jpg); Can I add an alt tag to the CSS somehow, or can I have it added to the HTML? What is the best way to handle this, to include keywords like exquisite weddings and special event designs?
Technical SEO | | BridgetGibbons0 -
Canoical tags how do i use them
Hi i have this coming up on the report for my url www.in2town.co.uk but i am not sure how to use the canonical tag. I am using joomla and would be grateful if anyone could please give me advice on how to use this. Canonical URL Tag Usage Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt> <dd>0</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd> <dd>many thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
</dd> </dl>0 -
'No Follow' and 'Do Follow' links when using WordPress plugins
Hi all I hope someone can help me out with the following question in regards to 'no follow' and 'do follow' links in combination with WordPress plugins. Some plugins that deal with links i.e. link masking or SEO plugins do give you the option to 'not follow' links. Can someone speak from experience that this does actually work?? It's really quite stupid, but only occurred to me that when using the FireFox add on 'NoDoFollow' as well as looking at the SEOmoz link profile of course, 95% of my links are actually marked as FOLLOW, while the opposite should be the case. For example I mark about 90% of outgoing links as no follow within a link masking plugin. Well, why would WordPress plugins give you the option to mark links as no follow in the first place when they do in fact appear as follow for search engines and SEOmoz? Is this a WordPress thing or whatnot? Maybe they are in fact no follow, and the information supplied by SEO tools comes from the basic HTML structure analysis. I don't know... This really got me worried. Hope someone can shed a light. All the best and many thanks for your answers!
Technical SEO | | Hermski0 -
Magento Canonical Tags
Magento pages have been giving me a lot of trouble with the canonical tags. In some cases duplicate pages are showing up, so I need to add the canonical tag. In other cases I'm getting an error that there are multiple canonical tags per page. How can I get my pages canonized without duplicate tags? It seems like it's either too much or not enough, no matter what I do. Note: this only applies to category and product pages.
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Is it ok to just use the end of the url when using a Rel Cononical Link?
Hi, I am working with an account and the previous SEO used a Rel Canonical link that just uses the end of the url. Instead of the full url When I look it up on the web I see most people are using the full url. Is that the proper way to do it or does is suffice to just use the end of the url? Wanted to check before I take the time to change them all. -Kent
Technical SEO | | KentH0