IMAGE alt Tags
You include images in your articles to get people to read your text. Well-chosen images also strengthen your message. You shouldn’t forget to give those images good
alt attributes: alt tags and title tags strengthen the message towards search engine spiders and improve the accessibility of your website. In this post I’ll explain all about alt tags and title tags and why you should optimise those.
Note: the term “alt tag” is a commonly used abbreviation of what’s actually an alt attribute on an img tag. For any image on your site, the alt tag should describe what’s on it. Screen readers for the blind and visually impaired will read out this text and thus make your image accessible.
What are alt tags and title tags?
This is a complete HTML image tag:
<img src=“image.jpg” alt=“image description” title=“image tooltip”>alt text and SEO
Google, in their article about images, has a heading “Create great alt text”. This is not a coincidence, Google places a relatively high value on alt texts to determine what is on the image but also to determine the topic of surrounding text. This is why, in our content analysis, we have a check specifically to see whether you have at least one image with an alt tag that contains your focus keyword.
Alt text and title text
The alt text (or alt tags) is added to an image so there will be a descriptive text when the image for whatever reason can’t be displayed to the visitor. I can’t put it any better than Wikipedia: “In situations where the image is not available to the reader, perhaps because they have turned off images in their web browser or are using a screen reader due to a visual impairment, the alternative text ensures that no information or functionality is lost.” Be sure to add alt texts. Make sure the alt text includes the SEO keyword for that page and relates to / describes the image.
When hovering an image, IE shows the alt text as a ‘tooltip’. Chrome shows the title text like it was intended. Title text for images is similar and a lot of people that use these simply copy the alt text. More and more people simply leave these out. What is it for? “The title attribute can be very useful, but it is not a safe way of providing crucial information. Instead, it offers a good way to provide non-essential information, for example, the mood of the image, or what it means in context.” it’s nice to have information indeed, and isn’t taken into account for image SEO.