Image Alt and Title?

[JABacchetta]

I'm building a quotations website. Each quotation will have between 1 and 5 images (picture quotes) associated with it. The images will be featured as thumbnails (image gallery) on the quote post itself.

How should I handle the image alt and title tags so that I rank better for a quote in image search, and also strengthen the ranking signals on the quote post itself?

Take for example, a photo of a beach and a photo of the sun. Both have the same quote on it: "Laughter is an instant vacation." Should the quote itself go into the alt tag? while the description of the image goes into the title? Or should the quote go into the title? Would this be correct?

Title: Beach with children playing in the sand.

Alt: "Laughter is an instant vacation."

Title: Sun shining in the sky.

Alt: "Laughter is an instant vacation."

What about if the quote is very long? Google has said they like when the alt and title tags are short.

[Morningside]

My bad.  I thought since you said it was a full-time job for you that money was somehow involved.

[JABacchetta]

Jim,

A few notes:

1. This a simple quotations website. Not an e-commerce site in any way.

2. I do not have 15 or more employees.

3. I don't own a billion-dollar company.

4. I will have functional alt tags, whether or not someone thinks they're perfect or not.

What does all of this mean?

A) I wouldn't be worth anyone's time in court.

B) Even if a case was presented, a judge would laugh hysterically... because there is no case.

I can guarantee you I will never... ever, be sued for not having the correct alt tags on my images.

[Morningside]

I hate to push back on this, but making a site accessible for the disabled is not considered "volunteer work" ... it's the law.  The Americans With Disabilities Act requires businesses who make their services available to the public to make "reasonable accommodations" so that disabled members of the community can access their services.  Those requirements apply to websites.

And if you think you can just ignore them, wait until someone sues you for an ADA violation (or several).  Like it or not, if you're selling to the public, then you are a "public accommodation" and bound by the law.  Consider it part of what you have to do to run a public business.

Here's a resource about ADA accessibility requirements and websites:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6974795_test-ada-compliance.html

[JABacchetta]

Jim,

The problem with that is Google has said it doesn't like long alt text. And we're only using a simple 5 word quote for this example. Imagine a quote that's 30 words, or longer... in addition to the description of the image itself.

And while I'm all for the visually impaired person getting a better user experience, I'm more concerned about my website being successful. This is a full-time job for me, not volunteer work.

[Morningside]

I think you are so focused on SEO that you're losing the purpose of what the ALT tag is for.  The ALT tag is to operate as a "stand-in" for the actual image.  This is part of making your site friendly for people with disabilities, such as vision impairment.  Someone comes to your website, and they can't "see" the image, they mouse over the image and the screen reader reads the text to them.    What is going to be more useful to them?

ALT="A picture of sun shining in the sky and a quote: 'Laughter is an instant vacation.'"

OR

ALT="Laughter is an instant vacation"

Which does the best job telling the visually impaired person what is appearing on the screen?

Jim

[JABacchetta]

One more possibility is to take an excerpt of the quote, maybe the first 10 words or so.

Title: Quote from Milton Berle

Alt: "I have never in my life learned anything from any..."

But that would still leave me with duplicate title tags across multiple images.

[JABacchetta]

Another option would be to just add "Quote from Albert Einstein" in the alt tag, and then a description of the image itself in the title. For example:

Title: Beach with children playing in the sand.

Alt: Quote from Milton Berle

The only problem I see here is that first, the quote itself isn't included anywhere in the image, so if someone is searching for that quote on image search, it's not going to show up. Additionally, there could potentially be dozens of images on my site (and on the same page) with the same exact alt tag.