Asset names and descriptions

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You stand behind your products, but they have to be found by your customers. There is a way to get higher in the results of search engines and influence how your articles are displayed on the website of a retailer. This can be done immediately and is not complicated: fill in your asset descriptions and optimize the asset names!

This gives you more chance that your products, product images and documents (and therefore your name) will be found even better by search engines such as Google, reach a larger audience and can be distributed more easily.

The importance of asset descriptions

When starting with EZ-base, your product offering is uploaded, including relevant features on which products can be selected. The products are enriched with associated assets such as images, logos, URLs, icons, certificates and/or videos. These assets can be given a name and description. Entering this name and description is important for several reasons:

  • Search engines include this underlying information in their indexing. The better filled, the more chance to end up higher in the search results.
  • Wherever the assets are used they contribute to the findability of the product. The more information, the more overlap with your customer and the sooner they will find your item.
  • The distributors who include your products in their online shop will retrieve the information from EZ-base. As you fill in the product information, it will also appear in their online shop. So you have your own influence on how this will be visible.
  • Prevent your competitor from taking a lead. Suppliers who take the trouble to use valuable names and descriptions, offer a more extensive service to their (end) user and achieve better results compared to suppliers who omit this.

As a supplier, it is important to use the most valuable descriptions and names for your assets. You or your buyer can then export or link these, for example as a power supply for the e-commerce website. In this way you not only help the buyer to better meet the expectations of the end user, but you also help your buyer with the content.

SEO
Using the right search engine optimizations (SEO) makes your own website more likely to score higher in the search engines in organic (unpaid) search results. Providing valuable descriptions and names to, for example, links (URLs), files and images is such an SEO optimization. A search engine such as Google determines the position of a website in the search results by means of the descriptions found.

This applies to descriptions of assets on both own and external websites. In general: the more specific the description, the better a website can position itself in the search results.

Branding and conversion
Descriptions also offer many opportunities for your branding and conversion goals. By filling in smart descriptions, you can create more name recognition, increase customer loyalty and encourage (end) users to buy your products.

Normalise
Some descriptions are used by EZ-base to normalise. The usefulness of valuable descriptions is to make the context clearer, more readable and uniform.

What asset names and descriptions are

Search engines are continuously indexing web pages. Indexing is making web pages findable and their descriptions. By indexing web pages are found by users.

Names
Descriptive filenames are important for search engines: if the search engine does not find a suitable description on the web page, it looks at the filename. This is then used in the indexing as a translation of the image. A description and a filename therefore result in better findability.

Descriptions
Because search engines cannot ‘see’ an image, they read the image using this alternative text.
Descriptions are shown as a tooltip in the user side of EZ-base and possibly in the web shop of your customers.

What to do

  1. Always give a relevant description and/or name to links, file names and images.
  2. Keep the description and names as short, relevant, specific, and at the same time informative as possible.
  3. Use a set of words that give a good impression of what is shown in an image, or what one can expect after clicking on the link or opening a file.

Below you will find the list of all asset-related columns that you may be able to provide with a (better) filename and/or description.

COLUMN EXPLANATION
Logo File name of the logo that belongs to the brand of an product category.
LogoDescription Description of the logo that belongs to the brand of an product category. This is shown as a tooltip in EZ-web and can be used for information in for example online shops.
ValueIcon1...X The file name of the icon associated with value Value1...x.
HeaderDescription1...X Descriptive text associated with Header1...x. This is shown as a tooltip in EZ-web. This text can be especially useful when an product category has many features and the header needs to be kept very short. An explanatory text can be placed in the HeaderDescription.
HeaderIcon1...X File name of the icon associated with feature Header1...x.
Image1...X The filename of an image (photo or illustration) belonging to an product.
ImageDescription1...X Own description that belongs to Image1…x. This is shown as a tooltip in EZ-web and can be used for information in for example online shops.
Icon1...X The filename of an icon associated with this product.
IconDescription1...X Own desciptions that belongs to Icon1…x. This is shown as a tooltip in EZ-web and can be used for information in online shops, for example. If an Icon is available, a clear explanatory description should be entered for the necessary explanation of the Icon.
Url1...X The internet address to a webpage where additional information about this product can be found.
UrlDescription1...X Own description that belongs to Url1…x. If an UrlDescription is present, it will be shown instead of the Url in EZ-web, which is much clearer and more readable. It can also be used for information purposes, for example in a online shop.
Document1...X The filename of a document associated with this product.
DocumentDescription1...X Own description belonging to Document1...x. This can be used for information purposes, for example in online shops.
GroupImage1...X The filename of an image (photo or illustration) that belongs to an product group. This image applies to all articles within this group.
GroupImageDescription1...X Own description belonging to GroupImage1...x. This is shown as a tooltip in EZ-web and can be used for information in for example online shops.
GroupIcon1...X The filename of an icon belonging to an product category.
GroupIconDescription1...X Own description belonging to GroupIcon1...x. This is shown as a tooltip in EZ-web and can be used for information in for example online shops. If a GroupIcon is available, you are urgently requested to enter a clear explanatory description for the necessary explanation of the GroupIcon. In addition, this description is used to normalise icons.
GroupUrl1...X The Internet address to a web page where additional information about an product category can be found.
GroupUrlDescription1...X Own description belonging to GroupUrl1...x. If a GroupURLDescription is present, it will be shown instead of the Url in EZ-web, which is much clearer and more readable. It can also be used for information purposes in online shops, for example.
GroupDocument1...X The filename of a document belonging to an product category.
GroupDocumentDescription1...X Own description belonging to GroupDocument1...x. It can be used for information purposes in, for example, online shops.

How to do

The ideal description does not exist, but there are ways to achieve the best possible result. With the tips below you will notice that your results can improve considerably.

Advice
A valuable asset description is:

  • As short as possible
  • Relevant
  • Specifically

In principle, there is no minimum or maximum length for the description of a link or image. The advice is to keep it as short as possible. Sometimes a single word may be sufficient, sometimes several words are needed. Think of the relevance, by using the words that best describe which page or information is specifically referred to.
It is not negative if the company name is given. On the contrary, it can even be positive (branding).

From an SEO perspective, it seems tempting to fill links, file names or image descriptions with the most important search terms a website wants to be found on.
However, keep in mind that Google searches for signals that may indicate artificial search engine optimization (spam). And one of those signals? Always the same descriptions for different links, file names or image descriptions. This lowers the ranking in the search results.
Make variation in the terms in the descriptions for links, filenames and images. This creates a more natural looking link profile, while being short, relevant and specific enough to tell the visitor what it’s all about.

Unfortunately, you have less control over incoming links to your website from external websites. The same goes for file name descriptions and image descriptions. Therefore, make sure that your internal links, file names and image descriptions on your own website(s) are properly filled.

Consult with each other (suppliers, customers and other website managers who share the same content) to discuss how everyone in the chain can do his or her bit to offer the (end) user an optimal experience.

Please note: with the asset import in EZ-base you can only give one description to an asset. In the data import file you can theoretically add several descriptions to 1 image. However, these cannot be imported.

Examples

By way of illustration you see som examples below of different types of descriptions that could be improved. Next you will see at least one example for a better alternative.

URL

Productsheet

Manual

Components drawing

Video

Image

Descriptions for available images, are generally shown as tooltips and/or as alternative descriptions in EZ-web. They can be used for information purposes in online shops, for example.

Search engines appreciate it when images (e.g. product images, product drawings, logos, icons and icons) are at least provided with alternative descriptions. It is even better if there are also informative file names (see below).
The advice is therefore to always give a valuable description of what can be seen on an image.

If the image is unavailable for any reason, the alternative text will be displayed.

Logo

File names

Descriptive filenames can also be useful for search engine users. If no suitable description can be found on the page with an image, the search engine often uses the filename as a fragment of the image in search results.

Insufficient or subject to improvement, because it is representative of the content of the file, image or document.