Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!
-
I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results. I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text. Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers). For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description.
A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this:
Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg .... 002, 003 etc
Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post.
Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image.
So my question is - is this right? The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect:
https://moz.com/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search
"Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image."
This is not the case. Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text.
Thoughts?
-
OK that's good to know. We do inadvertently have a lot of our pics on GI so I was obviously doing something right all these years.
Thanks
-
That Moz help page is kinda half-right
For many browsers, in the absence of a title attribute, they will display the alt text on hover instead. But if a title attribute is declared, it will be used, as you note.Keep in mind - image title attributes are not used as ranking factors for regular search, but they are used as ranking factors for Google Image Search. So still well worth optimising them if your site benefits from image search specifically (as a good photographer's site likely would).
Paul
-
Yes, I've taken that very approach with a re-write this afternoon. if the venue is relevant to the picture then I've left it in, otherise I've removed it from Alt but kept in Title. I've changed up the Title tags too so they're in blocks - first for this place, then this place, then this place etc rather than them all having a global value. It's probably a bit more balance now.
Thanks for the replies. Moz do need to correct that help page.
-
To me that sounds pretty good, providing it is relevant to to the image and provides genuine context it should be fine, I would however, consider - "wedding ceremony at venue" borderline - especially if it is in every image alt on a page. Try change it up a touch - if you cannot tell from the picture that it is at specific venue then maybe not have it in there, say for pictures with a shallow depth of field and the background is not easily identifiable, rings, flowers, tables placings, closeups and a like.
-
Yes, I'm wary of 'keyword stuffing' but I'm not sure what would actually constitute that.
If I've got : " Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue "... then that venue name is going to get mentioned in most images - after that is where the image was taken and is completely relevant. Would that be considered stuffing? It's difficult to judge what is and what isn't.
-
I believe what you are doing for your Alt text is great - make it describe each image individually.
As for title I would use it to further describe each individual image rather than duplicate for all in the blog post imagery. This is mainly used for further improving UX on each image.
Alt text is the most important from an crawling/seo perspective as is often used in collaboration with the surrounding text to determine context. Be wary of keyword stuffing in your alt tags.
Hope that helps.
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
-
How important is the file extension in the URL for images?
I know that descriptive image file names are important for SEO. But how important is it to include .png, .jpg, .gif (or whatever file extension) in the url path? i.e. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever vs. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever.jpg Furthermore, since you can set the filename in the Content-Disposition response header, is there any need to include the descriptive filename in the URL path? Since I'm pulling most of our images from a database, it'd be much simpler to not care about simulating a filename, and just reference an image id in my templates. Example: 1. Browser requests GET /images/123456
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud
2. Server responds with image setting both Content-Disposition, and Link (canonical) headers Content-Disposition: inline; filename="golden-retriever"
Link: <https: 123456="" example.com="" images="">; rel="canonical"</https:>1 -
Heading Tags (Specifically H2) being used within images
Hello, Mozzers I have a question regarding placement of heading tags. I have seen this asked a few times on the forum but some are from a couple years ago so wanted to get a more up to date answer regarding this. We want to add H2 tags across our site but our two options are to wrap images we are using as navigation on the top of the page, these are directly below our pages H1 tag and actually make sense. Example H1 title: Vehicles Images are specific brand logo with H2 being wrapped to pull the img alt: "Ford Vehicles" "Checvy vehicles" etc. The wrap would look something like this: I appreciate your time, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin443550 -
If Robots.txt have blocked an Image (Image URL) but the other page which can be indexed has this image, how is the image treated?
Hi MOZers, This probably is a dumb question but I have a case where the robots.tags has an image url blocked but this image is used on a page (lets call it Page A) which can be indexed. If the image on Page A has an Alt tags, then how is this information digested by crawlers? A) would Google totally ignore the image and the ALT tags information? OR B) Google would consider the ALT tags information? I am asking this because all the images on the website are blocked by robots.txt at the moment but I would really like website crawlers to crawl the alt tags information. Chances are that I will ask the webmaster to allow indexing of images too but I would like to understand what's happening currently. Looking forward to all your responses 🙂 Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika11 -
Page Title shown in SERPS not the same as
Hi all, I'm trying to get a homepage to rank for a certain term, but the page keeps showing up in the SERPS with the "Brand Name: Keyword" when I have written it as "Keyword - Brand Name" in the <title>tag. I can't even see "Brand Name" Keyword" in the code of the page so I don't know where Google is pulling this from? </p> <p>I have <meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir"/> on the page.</p> <p>I'm running Yoast and have removed the Brand from the Site Name and the Page Title for the homepage is "Keyword - Brand Name" in WordPress. I've changed the meta description so I can see the page has been crawled and re-indexed as the new meta description is showing in the SERPs</p> <p>Any idea, where Google is pulling this Page Title from and how I can get it changed to read the actual <title> tag? Or is there something I need to change in WordPress?</p> <p>Thank you!</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Would changing the file name of an image (not the alt attribute) have an effect of on seo / ranking of that image and thus the site?
Would changing the file name of image, not the alt attribute nor the image itself (so it would be exactly the same but just a name change) have any effect on : a) A sites seo ranking b) the individual images seo ranking (although i guess if b) would be true it would have an effect on a) although potentially small.) This is the sort of change i would be thinking of making :  changed to 
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam-P0 -
Alt tag for src='blank.gif' on lazy load images
I didn't find an answer on a search on this, so maybe someone here has faced this before. I am loading 20 images that are in the viewport and a bit below. The next 80 images I want to 'lazy-load'. They therefore are seen by the bot as a blank.gif file. However, I would like to get some credit for them by giving a description in the alt tag. Is that a no-no? If not, do they all have to be the same alt description since the src name is the same? I don't want to mess things up with Google by being too aggressive, but at the same time those are valid images once they are lazy loaded, so would like to get some credit for them. Thanks! Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Using Folkd for Video Backlink
Hi Mozzers, What are your thoughts on using www.folkd.com for video SEO? We have a few company videos and would like to possibly get a backlink by either embedding one of our youtube videos on our site or self hosting the video. Are bookmarking sites like this spammy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Canonical & noindex? Use together
For duplicate pages created by the "print" function, seomoz says its better to use noindex (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not) and JohnMu says its better to use canonical http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6c18b666a552585d&hl=en What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1