Alt image tags not being read by on-page optimization tool
-
Can bots see the keyword among other words in aIt image tags? For example, if the keyword is upholstery leather and the image tag says "our upholstery leather collection" will the keyword be recognized? Another example is buy leather. I have a image tag on a slide that reads "free samples before you buy leather" but an on-page analysis in moz does not show an alt tag title for buy leather? Same problem with an moz on-page analysis of the term upholstery leather.
Thanks!
Hunter
-
Good point. Just ran it through W3 and everything was spic and span clean..1.0 Strict compliance! The site is Leather Hide Store if you want to see but again, maybe a question for team moz.
Hunter
-
Sure. If it's only done 3x and genuinely descriptive, you're probably good.
As for why 'moz pro might not be seeing it, it's indeed tough to say, but I'd start by double-checking that you have valid code using http://validator.w3.org. If there's a tag left open or a quote out of place, that can muck things all up.
-
Hi Corey,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I actually only have upholstery leather mentioned on the page 3x and the moz on-page optimization report said I needed a fourth. Titling the alt img upholstery leather was perfect b/c it is an accurate description of the image and (I thought) would be recognized as the 4th mention of the keyword on the page. My question (or problem) is why is the moz on-page optimizer not reading it? I am glad to here the the googlebots will recognize the keyword even when enclosed by other text. One thought just occurred to me and that is the images are hyperlinked...could that influence it? Maybe a question best posed to the moz team?
Thanks,
Hunter
-
Hi Hunter.
1. Yes, search engines definitely read text inside of image ALT tags.
2. Yes, you should absolutely use them, every time. Among other important applications, they're used by screen readers for the blind. Having a handicap-accessible site, among other things, immediately places your site in a league above the competition in terms of overall quality.
3. Maybe, on the scope of keyword uses that you mentioned. You'll need to be very, very careful on how you use keywords in hidden tags like this. There was a time when keyword density was everything to Google, and black hat SEO's stuffed the crap out of these hidden tags with their keywords. Nowadays, the help that you give yourself, keyword-wise, for Google's standard (non-image) search, from ALT tags, is really negligible. It's much more about the above (having a useful description, just in those scenarios that it's really necessary). Most of the time, when I see a client trying something like this, they've invited massive penalties on themselves from abusing it. It's much easier to hurt yourself than help yourself through "optimizing" a lot of on-page factors like these, so be careful and keep these tags succinct / genuinely descriptive.
Good luck.
-C
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Alt Tags on multiple product images
Hi I work on SEO for an ecommerce site and wanted to find out how important it is to optimise all images with alt tags. We have alt tags in place, however have not optimised descriptions for the following example images: Front of cupboard Back of cupboard Side of cupboard etc Is this dangerous for SEO if these images all have the same alt tag? We have thousands of products so it would be a huge job to update these, but if it's crucial for SEO we can work through our priorities. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hi there, We keep getting duplicate page content issues. However, its not actually the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland
E.G - There might be 5 pages in say a Media Release section of the website. And each URL says page 1, 2 etc etc. However, its still coming up as duplicate. How can this be fixed so Moz knows its actually different content?0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Saw an issue back in 2011 about this and I'm experiencing the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/issue-duplicate-page-content-in-crawl-diagnostics-but-these-pages-are-noindex We have pages that are meta-tagged as no-everything for bots but are being reported as duplicate. Any suggestions on how to exclude them from the Moz bot?
On-Page Optimization | | Deb_VHB0 -
What kind of pages are they?
Hi all, after making an analysis of my website the tool has found two pages that I don't know what refers to: /?page id=2058 (only one page of this kind) /?attachment id= (only one page of this kind) does anyone know what kind of pages they could be? Do the have relevancy regading SEO? The plattform is Wordpress. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Image Alt and Title?
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.
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Better page optimization for specific locations
I have a client that gets great ranking in a certain city mainly because that is their main corporate office and the address and city name is all over the place in their content. I am about to embark on getting them higher ranking in other cities as well and am looking for the best approach to make that possible. My thoughts... 1- create seperate content for the other locations, but the body information would probably end up looking duplicate, but I could be more specific with title, description and content realting to that specific city. 2- add the additional cities to the current content??? Need some expert advice. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | brantwadz0 -
Can I use the first sentence of my page content as a meta description tag as well?
I just want to copy my content on the page and use the first or as well the second sentence of the content self for my meta description tag. Is that OK? Or should the Meta description tag be different?
On-Page Optimization | | paulinap19830 -
Nofollow tags
So on the homepage, should all the links like privacy, contact us, etc...be rel="nofollow" ? I want to get a better handle on passing as much link juice on homepage to important internal pages as I can, and want to get it right. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | azguy1