Product page > short description > meta description

Hello again!

Sorry for the belated reply. Took a small holiday break ??

You can get TSF’s meta description for the main query via this line:

the_seo_framework()->get_description();

How (and why) that would end up inside the image description field, I’m not sure. I think it’d be best to hire a developer looking at intricate details such as these, or, otherwise, supplement the data manually.

Hello Sybre,

Image alt-text and title do have an impact on SEO.
Does image meta description field provides better SEO for images, or can it be ignored?

The idea was to automatically add the meta short decription of a product page to its featured image meta decription. Indeed intricate, I agree.

For better SEO, I know that image attachement pages should permanently 301 redirected to product pages at which they are set as a featured image. For the case of redirection, does the image meta decription of the attachment page has an impact on SEO of images, meaning should it be filled in or can be ignored?

If it can be ignored due to redirection, then no reason to think about manually or automatically adding meta descrition of images, but only alt-text and title.

Looking forward to your advice,
Regards

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by pickme.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by pickme.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by pickme.

Hi again!

The image-alt text is meant to help visually impaired people still ‘see’ the image. As for SEO, it has no merit other than training Google’s AI.

With Google Image search, images can be found via data posted on the page, such as the page’s title, meta description, and content. There’s no reason to copy the page’s description into image alt-texts for SEO-reasons, and it could, in fact, be harmful to accessibility if the content is disparate from the image.

Here’s a proper example of an image we did not ‘SEO optimize’ (tautology intended):

From Google’s official SEO guide:

Optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search projects like Google Image Search to better understand your images. [Do] use brief but descriptive filenames and alt text[, but avoid] stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.

Yet, Google doesn’t need guidance to understand images as much anymore, thanks to their rapid advances in visual recognition, which you can test in Google Lens. In apposition, it’s also funny they call it a ‘search project,’ and not a ‘search engine.’

Moreover, how often do you get people to your site via Google Image Search? Any data obtained by SEOs for research (such as the famous Neil Patel), are obtained from unofficial and untrustworthy sources. These SEO optimizers (tau(n)tology intended) tend to build ‘solid’ cases around lies you should ignore. Their motive is exclusively monetary; they’re not there to help you — because they can’t.

Whatever SEOs have postulated about image optimization, it probably came from a gaping hole it shouldn’t have.

SEO utri non-causa pro-causa.

I recommend filling in alt-tags (if you find the time) via the media library in WordPress. The theme, WooCommerce, and WordPress may (should) dynamically update the images on the site to present these to people with impaired vision.

As for your other inquiry: Attachment pages are useless for most sites, and it’s why we default ‘noindex’ on those, which is good enough for SEO; 301-redirects for those help only with accessibility. If you wish to 301-redirect those, you can use our free extension Cord. Pages that cannot be accessed (for example, because of a 301-redirect) will not present any useful information to search engines. Attachment pages have nothing to do with displaying attachments throughout your site, however.