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.
For an image which is in the CSS and not the HTML, can you add an alt tag?
-
I would like to improve SEO on a page with three big images, which are currently hosted in the CSS. The sample I am working with is at http://xquisitevents.com/about-us/
and I put my cursor over the big picture of the wedding dress with bouquet, I inspected the element and saw this code in a div tag:
#upperleft {
- background-image:url(images/AboutTopLeft.jpg);
Can I add an alt tag to the CSS somehow, or can I have it added to the HTML? What is the best way to handle this, to include keywords like
exquisite weddings and special event designs?
-
further to this you could look at having the image above some text and the text describes the image -- using z-index to layer them - hope that makes a little sense... if not google z-index

-
Hi Bridget,
There is no alt attribute in css, so no you cannot add it there,
There are a couple of things you can do.
1. Optimizing your image file names will at least give an indication of what the image is about and
2. Rethink your css and the use of background images. Specifically you could get the same effect as you have now without background images using a combination of absolutely and relatively positioned divs. This way you can have the same layout as now but with the image in the html rather than the css and alt tags will be available for them.
Check the link here for some demo code: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8708945/how-to-position-text-over-an-image-in-css
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 can i safely eliminate wordpress unused tags?
Hi Over several years I used many tags ( more then 1000 ) on my wordpress website 😞 but most of them haven't any view and haven't any clicks on google search . now I want delete this old - useless - unused tags but I'm worried about seo problem like many 404 pages and problems like this . Does anyone have safe way to delete these wordpress tags? how can i safely remove them?
Technical SEO | | markdoel1 -
Can I safely delete unused tags??
Can I safely delete unused tags, ones with 0 posts connected to them? Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Google not Indexing images on CDN.
My URL is: https://bit.ly/2hWAApQ We have set up a CDN on our own domain: https://bit.ly/2KspW3C We have a main xml sitemap: https://bit.ly/2rd2jEb and https://bit.ly/2JMu7GB is one the sub sitemaps with images listed within. The image sitemap uses the CDN URLs. We verified the CDN subdomain in GWT. The robots.txt does not restrict any of the photos: https://bit.ly/2FAWJjk. Yet, GWT still reports none of our images on the CDN are indexed. I ve followed all the steps and still none of the images are being indexed. My problem seems similar to this ticket https://bit.ly/2FzUnBl but however different because we don't have a separate image sitemap but instead have listed image urls within the sitemaps itself. Can anyone help please? I will promptly respond to any queries. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TNZ
Deepinder0 -
Hosting images externally
In these days of CDNs does it matter for SEO whether images (and PDFs etc.) are hosted off-site? Does it make a difference if images hosted on Flickr, photobucket etc. Thanks
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110 -
Is alt text inside an img tag inside an h1 the same weight as text directly inside the h1?
Right now I use a background image and CSS to tie the h1 tag to my logo on each page. However, I am concerned that may not be best practice. Plus, I am interested in using schema markup on my logo. So, my question is, if I use an image with alt text inside my h1 tag, will the alt text carry as much weight as a text-based h1?
Technical SEO | | Avalara0 -
Is it important to include image files in your sitemap?
I run an ecommerce business that has over 4000 product pages which, as you can imagine, branches off into thousands of image files. Is it necessary to include those in my sitemap for faster indexing? Thanks for you help! -Reed
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
Question on noscript tags and indexing
If I have a <noscript>tag on every page of my website with the same sentence over and over saying something to the effect of "Sorry our site uses Javascript, please enable javascript for the full site experience.", Webmaster Tools will tell me that one of the most common words on my site is "Javascript".</p> <p>Is this something to be concerned about from an SEO perspective? My site is obviously not about Javascript and I don't want to dilute my page's topic or authority by repeating words that are not relevant to the topic of my site.</p> <p>Thanks!</p></noscript>
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
How do you mark a quote HTML wise?
Hi, As far as I know, in the past Italic was used to emphasize (similar use to Bold). Now I've seen people use Italic for quotations. Is that the correct thing to do for an entire paragraph or is it a problem for Google wise? Thanks
Technical SEO | | BeytzNet0