• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. Should I watermark my product images

        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.

        Should I watermark my product images

        On-Page Optimization
        9
        13
        11118
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • BipSum
          BipSum last edited by

          I am in the process of creating new images for my products to use on my website.  Are there any advantages or disadvantages of watermarking each image?  Is there an SEO impact good or bad?  I am aware that filename and Alt tags are important, but am unsure if google dislikes watermarked images.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • BipSum
            BipSum last edited by

            Hi all, thanks for your comments.  Looks like it wouldn't do any harm if I had a small brand logo placed on each image.  Will have a think and probably just go for it.

            Thanks.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • vmialik
              vmialik last edited by

              Time might come, and might be around the corner when, images in Google Search will be OCR'd (scanned for text/wording and made searchable) this will result in your watermarks if its in Copyright Joe Smith (text form) will be searchable.

              Also thing about this if you are using image search with an image of your brand, (not sure about practically but theoretically) you should be able to find all your images if they are watermarked with your Brand image in Google image search.

              So if you are planning to future proof your images for image SEO go for it!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Sharla
                Sharla last edited by

                Are you selling your own manufactured goods or reselling someone elses? If you're reselling someone elses, don't they have images of their products already to use?  I think it's rare for a reseller to take all their own product images, but if you do because you feel it gives you an edge, I would use your own logo prominently rather than as a watermark.  Maybe you have an artistic presentation of goods that needs proprietary protection - that is the only case I can see for potential watermarking.

                And, if you're selling your own goods, do you also sell them to others for resale?  I frequently need product photos from manufacturers for promotion by authorized sellers of their brands.

                Different companies have different ways they let marketing depts retrieve images, and from my side, the easier it is, the better.  I've never seen anyone put watermarks on their images, but some create their sites so you have to go through a lengthy registration process and wait to hear back - huge pain in the kisser for me as I have to go to the client, they have to find the account, get it back to me, I enter it, oops, website says not that string of numbers, go back... etc.  Time suck warp.

                Some companies make their images non-downloadable (though there are some workarounds and screen shots).  The ones I like best - just let me have the images, no mess, no fuss.  I am after all trying to sell their products.

                Then, I brand a corner with the resellers logo, but not as a watermark; rather it's a notice that yes, this company carries this merchandise.  And for SEO, if the reseller branded image of the original product comes up in image search (which they do sometimes as I always fully tag out my images), then all the better.  If you're selling your own goods with no authorized resellers, I think I would brand a corner also - no watermark, just a logo, but only if for some reason your logo is not already on the products.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • AWCthreads
                  AWCthreads @EGOL last edited by

                  Does the mark say, "EGOL?"

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • EGOL
                    EGOL @BipSum last edited by

                    I do the bottom left or right...  Weasels still steal it.  Some publish with my copyright mark, some paint it out, some put a textbox over my mark.

                    AWCthreads 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Oren.
                      Oren. last edited by

                      Lots of good points already.  I find that small logo in a corner is helpful because even if the image is stolen, saved to a computer, reused, posted on facebook without context, whatever -- your brand is still prominently displayed.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • AWCthreads
                        AWCthreads @BipSum last edited by

                        There may be some value in branding in that regard depending on what you're selling.

                        However, If its small and unobtrosive then the viewer probably wouldn't be able to tell what the logo is/says until they open the image.

                        Edit add - when its that small its easily removed and cropped so it really becomes a matter of whether you think its important as a branding element versus protection.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • gazzerman1
                          gazzerman1 @BipSum last edited by

                          Watermarking can have an advantage in Google images. If you have lots of images your brand will show up often and people will get to know it, without ever having visited your site.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • shendison
                            shendison last edited by

                            Do it - For me it adds credibility when a company watermarks their images unobtrusively, and G loves credibility...

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • BipSum
                              BipSum last edited by

                              Thanks for your feedback.  I was thinking about a small brand logo bottom right or left of each image.  Nothing instrusive.  For the feeds it would be clean images.

                              Thanks again for your thoughts.

                              gazzerman1 AWCthreads EGOL 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • SErOb
                                SErOb last edited by

                                I agree w/ AWC.

                                If you do watermark, just make sure it's not the least bit distracting.

                                One ecomm site I work with has over 10,000 original product images.  They were constantly being stolen, which is annoying considering the effort that goes into the production of the images.  Once they were watermarked (via the ecomm platform), the poaching pretty much stopped.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                • AWCthreads
                                  AWCthreads last edited by

                                  A watermark won't affect your rank.

                                  In my opinion this is more a matter of the use of your time.

                                  I very rarely see watermarks anymore on ecommerce sites. I think a watermark will do more to pollute the appearance of your product than protect your images from piracy.

                                  From a practical perspective, Google and other shopping feeds may have rules regarding watermarks and artwork associated with products so make sure you are aware of the rules if you use feeds.

                                  Edit add - I can recall 1 ecommerce site I've visited using watermarks and the only other places I see it are sites that sell images and artwork.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                  • 1 / 1
                                  • First post
                                    Last post

                                  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.

                                  • See all categories

                                  Related Questions

                                  • JamesDavison

                                    Value of using spaces or no spaces on product category page varient keywords

                                    keywords page grader several search terms category page

                                    Hello, all fellow Mozzers,
                                    I have taken over a project and this account, so can't change the username according to MOZ.🙃 We run an eCommerce website, and to me, some of the content is conflicting as some pages have more information content than what I would put in a commerce page, but this is how the boss wants it to work, personally, I would separate the content out.
                                    The page I'm working on:
                                    https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/205-70-14.html
                                    and this is an example of the rest of these types of pages, I will be tackling:
                                    https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/125-15.html I was tasked to improve SEO ranking, when using the MOZ page grader I had a score of 24 out of 27 83% SEO score and 3-page problems. 7th position in Google for the search term 205/70 R14 As it is a generic product listing page, It was pointless to add to the URL and the Internal links I can't reduce as these are links to products, so I went to reduce the
                                    keyword stuffing and making the page content more natural, this improved the page to 25 out of 27, 87% SEO score and 2-page problems. Improvement to 3rd position in Google, but he wants to chase 1st place to be above his competitors, which is fair enough. It turns out that in the past, they have used this type of page to try and get a high ranking for several search terms, as it is a different variation on a tyre size terms are:
                                    205/70 R14, 205/70R14, 205/70 R 14
                                    205/70 X 14, 205/70X14, 205/70 X14
                                    and so on for all the different ways you can search for this tyre size. He is also convinced Google will see these as different search terms, and while I agree to an extent, this causes Keyword Stuffing on the page, which in turn was harming the rankings. Each product listed on the page already has its own title 205/70 R14, 205/70 HR14 and so on, so my question is. What is the best practice for writing content on these types of pages to gain high rankings for several Keywords, and what value does writing the same keyword with spaces and no spaces have? Any help or advice is welcome, so I have a better understanding of how to approach this for this page and the rest of the site. Cheers Mal

                                    On-Page Optimization | | JamesDavison
                                    0
                                  • SeobyKP

                                    How many hyphens are allowed in page titles or image names?

                                    When I was going through certification, I was told it should be limited to one or two. I was curious if there is a change.

                                    On-Page Optimization | | SeobyKP
                                    0
                                  • ATP

                                    Getting the Titles and Headings Right on Product Pages. Userbility vs SEO

                                    Hey Mozzers, I am optimising a chaotic section of the site including many similar products. Writing unique content etc. The titles and urls were all over the place so my first job was to tidy them up so I could make some sense of the situation, especially as sometimes they didn't even match! I should point out were on Magento, so product name = Both the Heading and Title of the page, the meta title can be set separately. When i refer to title I mean both <title>and <h1></strong><br /><br />Before they existed as such<br />URL:  domain.com/200-x-0-5-g-rs-232-balance.html<br />TItle:   PC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br /><br />This format was (Product Code, Capacities, Resolutions, Accuracy, Product Title)<br /><br />The issue was all 60 products in a page followed this format. Navigating through the page was a nightmare and was just a jumble of numbers and highly confusing even to me who learnt what they all mean, especially when you had 8 products from the same range you got presented with<br /><br />APC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1235 500 x 1g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1236 1000 x 2g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1238 5000 x 10g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1239 10000 x 15g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1210 20000 x 25g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1211 50000 x 50g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance</p> <p>I changed them to something more user friendly.<br /><br />URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />This has seen the following benefits<br />- URL is now clear and means something to the user<br />- Product titles are easy to navigate and the page is more pleasing to the eye<br />- The jumble of numbers in the title are now all labelled and shown below each product listing in bullet point so the user can see the basic spec of a product without having to decipher any titles<br /><br />Upon reflection I has a couple of concerns I was hoping you could discuss, I am wondering if I have made the titles too simple.<br />1) I have no product code in the title<br />We have our own products manufactured and sell existing brands with their own product codes. Some of these can be lengthy. Adding them makes them hard to the eye and the page looked cramped.<br /><br />The codes are listed beneath each product title on category pages and on a list on the actual product page, but no where in the titles. <br /><br />2)None of our products have a brand listed in the title<br />None of the products on the site had brand names in anything but the images when i started and as such it snuck under my radar. But should i pre-fix all titles with a brand name?<br /><br />Should </p> <p>URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance</p> <p>become</p> <p>URL: domain.com/BRAND1-200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: BRAND1 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />My instinct tells me to change things to include brands as its useful to the customer and should have an SEO benefit, but to leave out product codes as they are accessible to the customer where they are now and dont make things messy and unreadable.<br /><br />As always, thanks for the input!</p></title>

                                    On-Page Optimization | | ATP
                                    0
                                  • BeckyKey

                                    Alt Tags on multiple product images

                                    Hi I work on SEO for an ecommerce site and wanted to find out how important it is to optimise all images with alt tags. We have alt tags in place, however have not optimised descriptions for the following example images: Front of cupboard Back of cupboard Side of cupboard etc Is this dangerous for SEO if these images all have the same alt tag? We have thousands of products so it would be a huge job to update these, but if it's crucial for SEO we can work through our priorities. Thank you!

                                    On-Page Optimization | | BeckyKey
                                    0
                                  • mrdavidingram

                                    SVG image files causing multiple title tags on page - SEO issue?

                                    Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO? A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues. Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case? If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.

                                    On-Page Optimization | | mrdavidingram
                                    2
                                  • quiltedkoala

                                    How do I fix duplicate page issue on Shopify with duplicate products because of collections.

                                    I'm working with a new client with a site built on Shopify. Most of their products appear in four collections. This is creating a duplicate content challenge for us. Can anyone suggest specific code to add to resolve this problem. I'm also interested in other ideas solutions, such as "don't use collections" if that's the best approach. I appreciate your insights. Thank you!

                                    On-Page Optimization | | quiltedkoala
                                    0
                                  • TBSEO

                                    Image titles and alt tags for multiple images

                                    I'm hoping some of you may be able to help me understand the best way to optimize my image titles and alt tags for a specific situation. I'm working on an interior design website and they have hundreds of pictures. each of their projects has about 10 pictures. Is it best for me to us the key phrase in each title and tag? or is that to repetitive? here is what I mean: A project called "urban interior design" all images are of urban interior design, just different angles and features, so my initial idea is to just have each image title like this: Title: "urban interior design dinning area" Alt: "urban interior design dinning area view" Title: "urban interior design living room" Alt:"urban interior design living room couch view" Is this the best way or will it actually hurt my ranking with too much exact keyword use? Thanks for your help!

                                    On-Page Optimization | | TBSEO
                                    0
                                  • nux

                                    Related products - random products or static

                                    Hello, I was curious about where to get related products from.  Currently I just grab some random products from the same category. Would there be any benefit to always linking to the same related products on a product page? Thanks

                                    On-Page Optimization | | nux
                                    0

                                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                  Start my free trial
                                  Products
                                  • Moz Pro
                                  • Moz Local
                                  • Moz API
                                  • Moz Data
                                  • STAT
                                  • Product Updates
                                  Moz Solutions
                                  • SMB Solutions
                                  • Agency Solutions
                                  • Enterprise Solutions
                                  • Digital Marketers
                                  Free SEO Tools
                                  • Domain Authority Checker
                                  • Link Explorer
                                  • Keyword Explorer
                                  • Competitive Research
                                  • Brand Authority Checker
                                  • Local Citation Checker
                                  • MozBar Extension
                                  • MozCast
                                  Resources
                                  • Blog
                                  • SEO Learning Center
                                  • Help Hub
                                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                  • How-to Guides
                                  • Moz Academy
                                  • API Docs
                                  About Moz
                                  • About
                                  • Team
                                  • Careers
                                  • Contact
                                  Why Moz
                                  • Case Studies
                                  • Testimonials
                                  Get Involved
                                  • Become an Affiliate
                                  • MozCon
                                  • Webinars
                                  • Practical Marketer Series
                                  • MozPod
                                  Connect with us

                                  Contact the Help team

                                  Join our newsletter
                                  Moz logo
                                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                  • Accessibility
                                  • Terms of Use
                                  • Privacy

                                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.