How should a ALT TAG Be?
-
Hi All,
Can a ALT Tag have special characters?
Can i have my ALT Tag as
Image-explained-with-what-it-is?
Can i have - hyphens as this?
Thanks
I have a 2nd question
I have 100's of videos which has a ALT tag as
How can i deal with them?
Can i add the Video title as ALT Tag?
thanks
-
That's not ideal.
If you're trying to do this programmatically in a CMS, perhaps there's a way to do something like:
alt="Photo {Some Property}"
alt="{Some Property}"
alt="Photo"
Using "Null" is worse than leaving it blank, I think.
-
So these
Can be
Is this fine?
-
Just is correct that the primary purpose of alt text to assist the visually impaired. Therefore, you should provide descriptive, concise alt text for every relevant image. So no, do not place hyphen between every word. You can (and should) use hyphens, accent marks, etc. for words that need them in alt text.
For non relevant, redundant images such as bullets and purely decorate images, you should use null alt text (alt=""). This will signal the screen reader to skip over the image.
Hope that helps! (Christy)
-
The primary purpose of the alt tag is to assist those visually impaired visitors who are using screen readers. Just make the tag descriptive of the image it is replacing - alt="Photo of Pole Vault Accident". For video thumbnails, you should do the same thing if you can. The video title will work fine.
I consider SEO a secondary consideration for alt tags. You may want to include targeted keywords there. But really, if you're focus is usability, and if the image is relevant to the content of the page, then you'll satisfy SEO when you focus on the alt tags' usability.
There are a lot of other more high-impact factors you can focus on - both on-page and off. If you've gotten on-page optimization down to alt tags, you may want to spend more time on link building.
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
-
Duplicate title tags, how to solve that?
We are currently running the "yellow pages". The problem is that Google Webmasters reports a lot of duplicate title tags. It's because we have three languages and the title consists of company name. for example: FCR Media Lietuva, UAB (The same in all languages). Of course we make different meta desriptions and so on. How should we solve this problem or should be just leave it as it is?
On-Page Optimization | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
What are "stop" words in Title Tags?
My client is following his GoDaddy SEO Checklist, and it is reporting 5 errors in Title Tags, saying the Titles contain "stop" words. I can't figure out what these are. Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel0 -
Alt and title tags on images
For SEO, are alt and title tags still worth the effort? Or have they gone the way of meta keywords? I can see having alt tags for visually impaired reasons, but at this point is there any SEO reason to use them?
On-Page Optimization | | CompucastWeb0 -
"Canonical URL Tag Usage" recommendation in SEOmoz "On-Page Optimization" Tool
Here comes another one related to SEOmoz "On-Page Optimization" Tool. The tool says the following about one of our pages: Canonical URL Tag Usage Explanation: Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to
On-Page Optimization | | gerardoH
use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future
developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe
the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic
today. Recommendation: Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page. Let's say our page is http://www.example.com/brands/abc-brand and on its header we'll place the following tag: Is this correct? I thought the canonical tag was meant for duplicates of the original page, for example: http://www.example.com/brands/print/abc-brand href="http://www.example.com/brands/abc-brand**?SESSID=123** Thanks in advance.0 -
Title Tag, Are the Keywords Plucked out of it?
We are working on redoing our site and I read the article from rand about how to properly format title tags, here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page He showed how he could take 6 keywords and use them all in the title tag: The title Tag:
On-Page Optimization | | donford
Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org The keywords:
Ted Baker
Ted Baker London
Ted Baker Clothing
Ted Baker Mens
Ted Baker Mens Clothing
Ted Baker Mens Collection So what I am wondering is the keyword Ted Baker Mens Collection actually getting found. In this case we are dealing with a contraction (men's) and a plural form of a keyword (collections). Is it plucked out from the title tag above?
Like this? Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org In his article he goes on to say the biggest mistake he sees is, unfortunately exactly the way our site was built 6 years ago. That is people doing this: Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com Our site does just that, while we are PR 4 and get decent traffic for the business we are in, we are doing a huge update with new pages, information, and most importantly trying to get all the SEO the best as possible. I want to make sure before we make these what could be huge impact changes that search engines do in fact Pluck the keywords from the title tag, and they are not required to be together. Thank you for any thoughts, answers and most importantly your time. Example following this formula: Our Top 3 Keywords:
Molded Rubber
Rubber Molding
Custom Molded Rubber Our Old way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber, Rubber Molding, Molded Rubber
The new way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber - Molding Services | OurSite.com0 -
Title tag questions
General title tag questions how important is it not to change your title tag, I own a prom dress site and I'm always changing them between prom and homecoming' Is it bad to have title tags that are only different by one word across thousands of pages on your site. I have thousands of dresses so each title tag only varies by the style # I have always had title tags that are for example black prom dresses, well i recently discovered that just black dresses is googled 10 times the amount so im debating changing them to black dresses so that the word dresses is closer to the front of the title tag, am I over reacting or is that a good idea or would it be bad to put black dresses, black prom dresses, black homecoming dresses I also put the year in almost every title tag 2012, is that bad, I ranked great for 2012 stuff but could it hurt my homepage domain rankings on major broader keywords
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
Summary of Anchor Text and Hash Tags
This a summary of my understanding of anchor text and hash tags, along with a question. I'm looking for confirmation of my assumptions and an answer to the question. Here we go: Given these two links on a page in order, Google will use the anchor text "first" a) First b) a) Second Given these two links on a page in order, Google will use the anchor text "Second" a) First b) Second Given these three links on a page in order, Google will use the anchor text "Second" and "Third" a) First b) Second c) Third Is this consistent with your understanding of using hash tags to get around the first link rule? Here's my question: If I have the following 4 links on a page, does 50% of the link juice go to Page A and 50% to Page B; OR 25% to Page A and 75% to page B; OR something else? www.example.com/Page-A.html www.example.com/Page-B.html#anchor1 www.example.com/Page-B.html#anchor2 www.example.com/Page-B.html#anchor3 Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | dvansant0 -
Will a "no follow" "no index" meta tag resolve duplicate content issue?
I have a duplicate content issue. If the page has already been indexed will a no follow no index tag resolve the issue or do I also need a rel canonical statement?
On-Page Optimization | | McKeeMarketing0