Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!

    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!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    7
    2237
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • robandsarahgillespie
      robandsarahgillespie Subscriber last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • robandsarahgillespie
        robandsarahgillespie Subscriber last edited by

        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

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ThompsonPaul
          ThompsonPaul @robandsarahgillespie last edited by

          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

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • robandsarahgillespie
            robandsarahgillespie Subscriber last edited by

            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.

            ThompsonPaul 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • TimHolmes
              TimHolmes @robandsarahgillespie last edited by

              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.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • robandsarahgillespie
                robandsarahgillespie Subscriber last edited by

                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.

                TimHolmes 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • TimHolmes
                  TimHolmes last edited by

                  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.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • seoanalytics

                    Text over image

                    Hello, I am creating an overlay on a image. Is it ok to write on this overlay in html or it is better to have the text not on a image for google and other search engines ? Thank you,

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
                    0
                  • davidkaralisjr

                    Author Byline in Page Title in SERP

                    I was exploring my company's visibility in Google News results, and I noticed the author byline in a recently published article was being pulled into the page title in the SERP. See the attached image for a screenshot. It makes it sound awkward: "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You Patrick..." - as if we're explaining it to some guy named Patrick? We have the byline the same way in all other posts, but this is the first I've seen this happen. Has anyone seen/had this happen, and if so, have any ways to prevent it? Thanks in advance for any insights! Here's the post URL: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/how-to-find-best-cannabis-experience-high csvmF

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidkaralisjr
                    0
                  • blankslatedumbo

                    Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**

                    I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo
                    0
                  • ChrisHolgate

                    Is it worth creating an Image Sitemap?

                    We've just installed the server side script 'XML Sitemaps' on our eCommerce site. The script gives us the option of (easily) creating an image sitemap but I'm debating whether there is any reason for us to do so. We sell printer cartridges and so all the images will be pretty dry (brand name printer cartridge in front of a box being a favourite). I can't see any potential customers to search for an image as a route in to the site and Google appears to be picking up our images on it's own accord so wonder if we'll just be crawling the site and submitting this information for no real reason. From a quality perspective would Google give us any kind of kudos for providing an Image Sitemap? Would it potentially increase their crawl frequency or, indeed, reduce the load on our servers as they wouldn't have to crawl for all the images themselves?
                    I can't stress how little of a hardship it will be to create one of these automatically daily but am wondering if, like Meta Keywords, there is any benefit to doing so?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisHolgate
                    1
                  • jpfleiderer

                    508 compliance vs good SEO re: Image alt tags

                    I'm currently in debate with our 508 compliance team over the use of alt tags on images. For SEO, it is best practice to use alt tags so that readers can tell what the image represents. However, they are arguing that these images should NOT have alt text as it doesn't add anything to the disability screen reader as the image text would be repetitive with the text on the page. I feel they are taking the "decorative" image concept in 508 compliance too far. It's intention is for images for bullets, etc that truly are decorative in nature and add no benefit to the reader. What is the communities thoughts on this? Have you ever run into scenario where 508 is attempting to ruin SEO? Usually the 2 play nicely.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpfleiderer
                    0
                  • BeytzNet

                    Is there a limit to images file names?

                    Hi, I have an eCommerce site with hundreds of product images. For management reasons files are named in length to have the product details in them.
                    Is there a limit for a filename length before it is considered ambiguous or spammy etc.?
                    (it usually ranges 50-70 chars). Thanks

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                    0
                  • Towelsrus

                    How many time should a keyword be used in the body of text?

                    We employee an outside agency to write content for our website as we do not have the ability in house to write unique and good quality content. They have just sent an article which is around 300 words. I told them the keyword phrases to use. When I got the document there is only 1 instance of the keyword phrase(s) in it. Now there seems to be a conflict here amongst posts I have read and general SEO advise as to how many times it should be present (SEOmoz indicates 4 times for instance), our outside agency says it doesn't matter. Now if I have a page optimised for 2 keywords this starts making things tricky and probably looks keyword stuffed to the reader. Assuming the keywords are present once in meta tags, H1, meta descriptions and alt text, what do people think is best practice taking into account recent panda updates? Thoughts appreciated. Thanks Craig

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus
                    0
                  • HD_Leona

                    Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search

                    Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos.  When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed.  The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such:  domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results.  This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can  I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent:  * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos?  I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.