• seohunters9

        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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        4. Combining images with text as anchor text

        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.

        Combining images with text as anchor text

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        3
        6
        2263
        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.
        • fablau
          fablau last edited by

          Hello everyone,

          I am working to create sub-category pages on our website virtualsheetmusic.com, and I'd like to have your thoughts on using a combination of images and text as anchor text in order to maximize keyword relevancy.

          Here is an example (I'll keep it simple):

          Let's take our violin sheet music main category page located at /violin/, which includes the following sub-categories:

          • Christmas

          • Classical

          • Traditional

          So, the idea is to list the above sub-categories as links on the main violin sheet music page, and if we had to use simple text links, that would be something like:

          Christmas
          Classical
          Traditional

          Now, since what we really would like to target are keywords like:

          "christmas violin sheet music"

          "classical violin sheet music"

          "traditional violin sheet music"

          I would be tempted to make the above links as follows:

          Christmas violin sheet music
          Classical violin sheet music
          Traditional violin sheet music

          But I am sure that would be too much overwhelming for the users, even if the best CSS design were applied to it. So, my idea would be to combine images with text, in a way to put those long-tail keywords inside the image ALT tag, so to have links like these:

          Christmas
          Classical
          Traditional

          That would allow a much easier way to work the UI , and at the same time keep relevancy for each link. I have seen some of our competitors doing that and they have top-notch results on the SEs.

          My questions are:

          1. Do you see any negative effect of doing this kind of links from the SEO standpoint?

          2. Would you suggest any better way to accomplish what I am trying to do?

          I am eager to know your thoughts about this. Thank you in advance to anyone!

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

            Any more thoughts on this?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • fablau
              fablau @SamuelLavoie last edited by

              Thank you Samuel for your reply as well.

              Yes, what you describe is exactly what I also learned: no need to be too much "redundant" about keywords, but SEs will understand from the surrounding context... well, fact is some of our competitors are doing what I am suggesting here and they are dominating the 1st spot on Google for most of the keywords we are competing with. They also have a more clear "siloed" category-sub-category structure than us, which suggests this technique combined with the siloing technique help a great deal (also, note that for most category pages we compete with, we have much more external links than them! Hence my though that a more clear, siloed structure could help)

              And of course, anything we do is with the user in mind: ALT text is always meant for users first, but I don't see harm in being a little bit redundant on that if it could help with SEO as well, don't you?

              Thank you again very much, and please, any additional idea you may have is very welcome!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • fablau
                fablau @RobCairns last edited by

                Thank you Rob for your extensive reply.

                I see what you mean, and I am aware of that. This "link technique" suggestion is part of a bigger plan I am working on where the goal is to create a more "siloed" structure to increase topical relevancy as I have discussed on this other thread of mine:

                https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/panda-rankings-and-other-non-sense-issues

                And even though that's a minor thing, everything adds up. For example, we have recently moved from http to https and that's also is a minor thing, but adds up with all other improvements we are working on.

                As for your suggestion:

                "I would consider is replacing the example music videos from your specific instruments pages to your home page so visitors know what kind of quality they are getting if they subscribe."

                I don't exactly understand what you mean, are you talking about our own produced Music Expert videos or the YouTube videos inside our product pages submitted by the users?

                Thank you again

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • SamuelLavoie
                  Samuel Lavoie @RobCairns last edited by

                  Agreed with Robert, that is a minor optimization but I don't see negative effect SEO wise.

                  Yes, exact match anchor texts can be powerful, but nowadays search engines rely less on it directly and will leverage text found near the links themselves and elsewhere on the page. Let say having this structure should have a pretty similar impact on giving anchor text weight :

                  <nav>

                  More violin sheet music categories

                  Christmas
                  Classical
                  Traditional
                  </nav>

                  Besides SEO, another thing to consider is the fact that screen readers will read the text in the alt attribute. Think about how it could help (or not) a user to hear : "graphic link christmas violin sheet music" "graphic link classical violin sheet music", etc.

                  Hope this helps with an added perspective on alt attributes.

                  fablau 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • RobCairns
                    RobCairns last edited by

                    Hi Fabrizo,

                    I think I understand what you are asking here, but if not please feel free to rephrase or correct me.

                    Based on what you are saying, you seem to be going for exact match keywords linked through image alt text for maximum relevancy to your targeted search terms. There aren't really any "problems" with this, but you may be going after a red herring here, even if your competitors are doing well with this tactic:

                    a) There is no guarantee that this tactic is what is generating the ranking results for their targeted search terms

                    b) Alt tags and exact match keywords don't carry much weight in terms of your overall ranking potential. That comes from links, content, architecture and various other factors.

                    I think that you may be expending a bit too much energy on relatively minor factors when you might consider beefing up your link profile, expanding your content base, improving your user experience, etc. This is especially true when you start getting into sub categories - if you are constantly working on the small details you lose the forest because of the trees.

                    So, to answer your questions directly:

                    1. No, I don't think there is anything "negative" that will come from this strategy.

                    2. Yes, I think that this strategy will move the needle but in a very small way compared to building a few powerful, genuine links from relevant sources in your industry. Build up your content, give readers something about violins to be interested in. I took a look at your site and the first thing I would consider is replacing the example music videos from your specific instruments pages to your home page so visitors know what kind of quality they are getting if they subscribe.

                    It's an uphill battle since your site is effectively an e-commerce store and therefore features a lot of images and uncrawlable content in videos, but adding some content about the value of your service, building links to your category/subcategory pages and improving the user experience is probably where you will get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of rankings.

                    Hope this helps - I'm always available if you would like to discuss further. Feel free to PM me at any time.

                    Cheers,

                    Rob

                    SamuelLavoie fablau 2 Replies 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

                    • RyanMeighan

                      Why are my site images hosted by secureservercdn.net?

                      All of my image links are hosted on secureservercdn.net. for example, if i go to a webpage, mydomain.com/blog/blog-post and right click any image with a "copy image address" the images are all linking to secureservercdn.net/blablabla rather than mydomain.com/wp-uploads/blalblabla. this cannot be good for SEO. Any ideas why this would be? My site is hosted through GoDaddy, is it on their end? Thanks, Ryan

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanMeighan
                      0
                    • robandsarahgillespie

                      Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!

                      I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results.  I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text.  Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers).  For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description. A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this: Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg   .... 002, 003 etc Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post. Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image. So my question is - is this right?    The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search "Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image." This is not the case.  Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text. Thoughts?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robandsarahgillespie
                      0
                    • snj_cerkez

                      Bulk reverse image search?

                      Hi, i have a couple fashion clients who have very active blogs and post lots of fashion content and images. Like 50+ images weekly. I want to check if these images have been used by other sources in bulk, are there any good reverse image search tools which can do this? Or any recommended ways to efficiently do this for a large number of images? Cheers

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | snj_cerkez
                      0
                    • friendoffood

                      Alt tag for src='blank.gif' on lazy load images

                      I didn't find an answer on a search on this, so maybe someone here has faced this before. I am loading 20 images that are in the viewport and a bit below.  The next 80 images I want to 'lazy-load'.  They therefore are seen by the bot as a blank.gif file.  However, I would like to get some credit for them by giving a description in the alt tag.  Is that a no-no?  If not, do they all have to be the same alt description since the src name is the same?  I don't want to mess things up with Google by being too aggressive, but at the same time those are valid images once they are lazy loaded, so would like to get some credit for them. Thanks!  Ted

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                      0
                    • BritneyMuller

                      Images Not Indexing? (Nudity Warning!) - Before & After Photos

                      One of our clients is in the Cosmetic Surgery business (bodevolve.com) and individuals most likely to purchase a cosmetic procedure only search for 2 things....'**before & after photos' and 'cost'. ** That being said we've worked extremely hard to optimize all 500+ before and after photos. And to our great disappointment, they still aren't being indexed...we are testing a few things but any feedback would be greatly appreciated! All photos are in the 'attachment' sitemap: http://bodevolve.com/sitemap_index.xml I'm also testing a few squeeze pages like this one: http://bodevolve.com/tummy-tuck-before-and-after-photos/ Thanks so much, Brit

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BritneyMuller
                      0
                    • ArchMedia

                      Should I redirect images when I migrate my site

                      We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
                      http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
                      http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
                      0
                    • Seeders

                      Combine .com and .co.uk domain? So forward .co.uk to .com for SEO?

                      Hello, A new client of mine has an .com and an .co.uk domain. Both the same content (and they don't have the capacity to make specific content on both domains). I am thinking building al domain authority to 1 domain. In this case the .com domain. 
                      And forward the .co.uk to this .com domain.
                      In this way, the .com will rank in both UK as in other English speaking countries, right? Or not?
                      Or should I use the  rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag? I am not sure. But I do know big brands rank high in the Netherlands with .com domains (for example booking.com). Looking forward on feedback on best practices here... Thanks!

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
                      0
                    • GeorgeMaven

                      Multiple sites linking back with pornographic anchor text

                      I discovered a while ago that we had quite a number of links pointing back to one of our customer's websites. The anchor text of these links contain porn that is extremely bad. These links are originating from  forums that seems to link between themselves and then throw my customers web address in there at the same time. Any thoughts on this? I'm seriously worried that this may negatively affect the site.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeMaven
                      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.