Meta Tags for Images in Multiple Galleries

[MikeRoberts]

For a while now we've had an outside SEO consultant as well as having me in-house doing a variety of work. One of the things our consultant would do was writing up optimized alt & title tags for the image galleries on our ecommerce sites.

Recently what came up was what to do when a image appears in multiple galleries (e.g. an image of a bedroom could appear in both the bedrooms gallery & the accent wall gallery). We're not sure whether it would be best practices to use the same exact alt & title tags for an image in all the galleries it appears in or whether that would be too much duplication and each gallery should have different tags despite being the same image.

None of it is being done in a deceptive manner, we're just been tailoring how we explain the image based on the specific gallery, landing page, etc. Our consultant is saying that an image should always have the same tags across the entirety of the site but I'm more of the mind that varying them by specific page would help images more readily rank for multiple relevant terms.

Any advice?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

I like using the same alt text for an image across the whole website. Alt text = alternative text = if the image is missing, what descriptive text would let the visitor understand what was there? Just make sure that 1 alt text is perfect (e.g. "master bedroom with green wall accent")

In terms of SEO, I see your point of varying the keywords in order to rank for different terms but I would be careful not to set off any spam flags. If you do decide to mix up the alt text, make sure they are still very similar and you avoid keyword stuffing.

[MikeRoberts]

I see what you're saying but in my head I'd it feels like using the same one everywhere would set off spam flags and/or wind up keyword stuffed more readily. For example, we have an image of an accent wall used in a commercial retail space made with artificial white brick paneling which could wind up in a gallery for brick, accent walls, and for retail design as well as potentially landing pages for retail design, accent walls, brick panels, white brick and in the gallery for the specific product line of that white brick... so I'd be worried making one 'perfect' alt tag that covers all those bases like "Old Navy commercial display with faux white brick panel accent wall" that appears in so many different galleries would be spammier and feel more stuffed.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

If you can keep it under 15 words, i'd stick with 1 alt text for all instances - throwback MC video. So in your case, "Old Navy commercial display, faux white brick panel accent wall" would be acceptable. I think it would strengthen the keyword relevancy for the image rather than using different alt text on different pages.

This gives me an idea for a test though... time to throw up a web page