ALT tags - How important are they?
-
I realise ALT tags are important from an accessibility perspective but in terms of organic search, do they carry much value?
I have a big site and it doesn't look like ALT tags have been added generally, it would be a massive job to fix and I'm just trying to weigh up what to concentrate on first.
Does anybody have any real life experience?
-
Hi seoman10 answering your question
They are important, but I think they are not even in the TOP 20 of the priorities when you rank a site, for me the most iportant factor are
- Content
- Backlinks
- Mobile-First User Experience
- Other Technical Factors
To support my point of view you can check the 200 ranking factors from backlinko and Image Optimization is in the 24 position.
"24. Image Optimization: Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption."
Optimize the ALT tags can give you a better score but will not give thousands of visitors. In the other hand a good link mixed with agreat content can give you that traffic.
When you are making an onpage optimization is really good idea to put your main keywords or releated keywords in the images and those ALT tags must be related to the topic of your article but is very usual that you will have a lot of images without ALT tag, such as icons, ads, backgrounds and Im sure that they will not hurt your SEO
Sources
Search Engine Journal
Backlinko
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
-
International SEO - Hreflang tags and URL Structure
Hello, I wonder if any SEO internationalisation experts can help. We are a UK centric business with a .com domain which all our traffic currently goes to. We have been growing in the US and are therefore looking to internationalise our website by building out some US pages using the subfolder .com/us. Since the keywords we wish to target in the US are different to the keywords we are targeting elsewhere, when implementing hreflang tags is it possible to use a different URL for the US page? So let’s say we are targeting ‘estate car’ generally but want to target ’station wagon’ as the keyword for the equivalent US page, can the URLs be different? Example: General page: www.example.com/estate-car US: www.example.com/us/station-wagon Hreflang tags: Would that be the correct implementation? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Hreflang tag implentation
Hi, We've had hreflang tags implemented on our site for a few weeks now, and while we are seeing some improvements for the regional subfolders I wanted to double check I had the tags implemented correctly (a couple of examples are below). However while the regional subfolder sites are now ranking instead of the US site for some keywords, some key search terms are still returning the US site. Could this be due to incorrect implementation for that specific page? Due to complications with using Magento we're implementing the tags in the site maps. Also magento appears to be inserting a rel canonical tag automatically for each page and self referencing e.g. On www.example.com/uk/security-cameras (one of the pages we're having issues with) the canonical tag is http://www.example.com/uk/security-cameras" />. Is this an issue? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. <url><loc>http://www.example.com/uk/dvrs-kits</loc>
Technical SEO | | ahyde
<lastmod>2014-07-23</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/uk/dvrs-kits/1080p</loc>
<lastmod>2014-07-23</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority></url>0 -
Bars Verus Hyphens in Title Tags
It has been quite a while since I have seen an article really talk about this and I am wondering if this even matters anymore? I prefer the look of a - rather than a | but just wondering if this is still a thing... If you know of a recent article going into findings on this supporting one or the other it would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
Page title tags and joomla/JCE
I'm working with a joomla/JCE website. At the moment, the 'title' field in articels controls the page title, menu item name and H1 tag. I've read that I can stop this happening so that I can name each separately and get my Page title tag back! Is anyone using joomla/JCE and can give any advice on how to do this? Many thanks. Iain
Technical SEO | | iain0 -
Using a Feedburner RSS link in your blog's header tag
It was suggested in Quick Sprout's Advanced SEO guide that it's good form to place your Feedburner RSS link into the header tag of your blog. Anyone know if this needs to be done for every page header of the blog, or just the home/main/index page? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Googleoff/on tags
Hi all, I'd like to restrict Google indexing a part of content on the page. Does tag really work for it as it described on https://developers.google.com/search-appliance/documentation/46/admin_crawl/Preparing#pagepart? Thanks, Jane
Technical SEO | | Jane_Barry0 -
Is Pinging important?
Somebody suggested me to ping my website's backlinks using services like www.Pingler.com. Firstly, I don't know what 'pinging' is and why is it important. Secondly, Should I go for it? Lastly, what kind of links should I ping regularly? I researched on google and got a feeling that only blogs should be pinged because they are updated regularly. Is that so?
Technical SEO | | KS__1 -
Using alt-codes such as ? in META title / description
Noticed a search result recently that really caught my eye and certainly stood out among the other 10 results on the page, the META description contained the following snippet: "Learn more about our ★★★★★ rated service..." Any opinions on how using such alt-chars might effect search positioning when used in either the title or description META tags? The starts certainly looked very different to anything else on the page... The claim of 5 star rated service was pretty much accurate so it was genuine and fair to use it...
Technical SEO | | digitalarts0