New Text and Alt Link SEO features added

We have added some new SEO settings into the online store admin that are designed to increase the text used for common website links, allowing a far greater degree of customisation and keyword targeting for text links and alt text.

If you go to Store Settings > SEO Links & Text then you will the various options available to you:

For each link, there is a short and long version. The short version is used in cases where lots of links are shown together (e.g in a list of artists), where space is limited, or where it would be otherwise inappropriate to display lots of text in the links. Also please note that these settings do not affect all links on your website, the changes affect the pages which are most important to the search engines (Product pages, lists of products, home pages). In cases where custom content has been written, the links will not change.

Now, admittedly this page might be a little overwhelming at first and you may decide that this degree of flexibility simply isn’t required for your website. However, for those wishing to get stuck in you can use this section to adjust the default text used for common links to products, artists, tags, searches and categories. You can also customise the alt text used on product images (NB this is the text that is displayed to users who either choose, or are unable, to display images in their browser).

The text used in links, and the alt text of images are not only important for users, they are also used by search engines to help identify the content and value of your pages. A link to an artist page with the text “Monet framed prints” more accurately describes the content than a link with the text “Monet”. This example may be appropriate if you wish to target users searching for “Monet framed prints”.

WARNING!

Search engines regard links with great importance, but you can be penalised if you do not use them carefully. Two things you should be careful to avoid are a) ‘stuffing’ too many keywords into your links, and b) using keywords that do not relate to the target page; in both cases, search engines become suspicious. Therefore, the new tools should really be used with caution and consideration. They are likely to have high value is used in a focussed manner as part of your overall keyword strategy. If abused though, these tools could lead to your website being considered overtly ‘spammy’, leading to black-listing as a worst case scenario.

Some examples:

Setting name	Example value	Example output
Tag/search link	[term] prints	landscape prints
Category link	[categoryName] canvases	abstract canvases
Product link	[title] by [artistName]	Hunters in the Snow by Pieter the Elder Bruegel