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.
-
My bad. I thought since you said it was a full-time job for you that money was somehow involved.
-
Jim,
A few notes:
1. This a simple quotations website. Not an e-commerce site in any way.
2. I do not have 15 or more employees.
3. I don't own a billion-dollar company.
4. I will have functional alt tags, whether or not someone thinks they're perfect or not.
What does all of this mean?
A) I wouldn't be worth anyone's time in court.
B) Even if a case was presented, a judge would laugh hysterically... because there is no case.
I can guarantee you I will never... ever, be sued for not having the correct alt tags on my images.
-
I hate to push back on this, but making a site accessible for the disabled is not considered "volunteer work" ... it's the law. The Americans With Disabilities Act requires businesses who make their services available to the public to make "reasonable accommodations" so that disabled members of the community can access their services. Those requirements apply to websites.
And if you think you can just ignore them, wait until someone sues you for an ADA violation (or several). Like it or not, if you're selling to the public, then you are a "public accommodation" and bound by the law. Consider it part of what you have to do to run a public business.
Here's a resource about ADA accessibility requirements and websites:
-
Jim,
The problem with that is Google has said it doesn't like long alt text. And we're only using a simple 5 word quote for this example. Imagine a quote that's 30 words, or longer... in addition to the description of the image itself.
And while I'm all for the visually impaired person getting a better user experience, I'm more concerned about my website being successful. This is a full-time job for me, not volunteer work.
-
I think you are so focused on SEO that you're losing the purpose of what the ALT tag is for. The ALT tag is to operate as a "stand-in" for the actual image. This is part of making your site friendly for people with disabilities, such as vision impairment. Someone comes to your website, and they can't "see" the image, they mouse over the image and the screen reader reads the text to them. What is going to be more useful to them?
ALT="A picture of sun shining in the sky and a quote: 'Laughter is an instant vacation.'"
OR
ALT="Laughter is an instant vacation"
Which does the best job telling the visually impaired person what is appearing on the screen?
Jim
-
One more possibility is to take an excerpt of the quote, maybe the first 10 words or so.
Title: Quote from Milton Berle
Alt: "I have never in my life learned anything from any..."
But that would still leave me with duplicate title tags across multiple images.
-
Another option would be to just add "Quote from Albert Einstein" in the alt tag, and then a description of the image itself in the title. For example:
Title: Beach with children playing in the sand.
Alt: Quote from Milton Berle
The only problem I see here is that first, the quote itself isn't included anywhere in the image, so if someone is searching for that quote on image search, it's not going to show up. Additionally, there could potentially be dozens of images on my site (and on the same page) with the same exact alt tag.
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
-
Multiple H1s and Header Tags in Hero/Banner Images
I work on education websites, and our sites are being flagged by SEO and accessibility checkers for having multiple H1s. The home pages have the site name as an h3 in the hero image, and an aspirational headline (think: Be Like Mike) as an H1. The sub-pages have two H1s: one on the site name in the banner image, and the other on the page title. Note that the site name is very keyword-rich. If we were to remove the H1 and H3 tags from the hero/banner images, would it do any SEO harm? At the same time, we’d rewrite the H1 on the home page to be more keyword-focused. Any other options? I also read that it’s OK to have multiple H1s as long as it’s clear which H1 belongs to the heading area and which one belongs to the body area of the page. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | UWPCE0 -
My website is not indexing the image.
Our website's images are not indexed. Will anyone help me? How will all images in my website be indexed? This is my website address: https://www.expertclipping.com/
On-Page Optimization | | jacky_risham0 -
Keyword in Domain AND Title. Yes or No?
We're working on a new buildout, and this one is really important to us. We've put a lot of resources into it. Before we launch, we want the structure to be just right... and this one question is nagging at me. How to structure urls? Consider these two options. The fictitious domain is "icesurfing.org". Including all 50 states in the keyword, there are nearly one million searches per month for "ice surfing [state]". We have a page for each state to focus on this traffic. But how would you structure the urls and titles? **icesurfing.org/state ** icesurfing.org/ice-surfing-state One concern is that the duplicate keywords in option 2 seem redundant, and a little spammy. When presented with google search, the matching tags are not as clean. Texas - IceSurfing.org Ice Surfing Texas - IceSurfing.org But Yoast automatically suggests option 2. Is this really the best practice? Is there are definitive article on this? THANK YOU!
On-Page Optimization | | RetBit0 -
Same titles in Webmasters' tools
Hello, In webmasters' tools I get a message saying I have 505 pages html improvements that are possible because 505 of my titles are used on two pages. Actually, webmasters' tools is tripping since the doubles they find are: www.example.com and www.example.com/ Anyways, I have indexation problems and I was wondering if this could be the case and how to solve that. Thanks for your help;
On-Page Optimization | | EndeR-0 -
Changed Blog Name - Duplicate Title Tags - Wordpress
Hi friends, I changed my blog name url from "german-shepherd-blog" to "dog-blog." Now I am getting a large amount of duplicate title tags. How do I tell google I made the change? Is there something on my site I need to change?
On-Page Optimization | | Joshlaska0 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Should I worry about duplicate titles on pages where there is paginated content?
LivingThere.com is a real estate search site and many of our content pages are "search result" - ish in that a page often provides all the listings that are available and this may go on for multiple pages. For example, this is a primary page about a building: http://livingthere.com/building/31308-Cocoa-Exchange Because of the number of listings, the listings paginate to a second page: http://livingthere.com/building/31308-Cocoa-Exchange?MListings_page=2 Both pages have the same Page Title. Is this a concern? If so is there a "best practice" for giving paginated content different titles? Thanks! Nate
On-Page Optimization | | nate1230 -
What's the best way to name an image for SEO?
Hi Guys,
On-Page Optimization | | krseo
I'm thinking about images and SEO. What's the best way for naming and using images in HTML Code? For example: Image-Name: keyword-keyword2-keyword3.jpg or keywordkeyword2keyword3.jpg ?
How many Keywords should I use max for a picture? And also do you use the alt tag as description of the image and the title tag or only the alt tag? If you use the title, what do you use it for? Maybe someone can copy a HTML-Code example for me 😉 Thank you 🙂
Alex0