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.
Null Alt Image Tags vs Missing Alt Image Tags
-
Hi,
Would it be better for organic search to have a null alt image tag programatically added to thousands of images without alt image tags or just leave them as is.
The option of adding tailored alt image tags to thousands of images is not possible.
Is having sitewide alt image tags really important to organic search overall or what? Right now, probably 10% of the sites images have alt img tags. A huge number of those images are pages that aren
Thanks!
-
Thanks, guys.
I've adjusted alt images tags on pages that really matter to me for organic. The tens of thousands of other images/pages are just going to have to chillax.
-
No problem at all. To be honest, it's really not a huge deal and probably not worth the dev budget or manhours required.
In most cases with a site like this, I'd be more inclined to add good alt text for all images on the most popular pages then, as you're working through other pages throughout the life of the campaign, update the alt text while you're at it.
If you're already updating the page title or content on a page, it's not that much extra effort to do the alt text while you're there.
-
Hi Eric & Chris,
Thanks for the help. Given the size of the site, tens of thousands of pages and more than one image per average page, I guess my real question is how much trouble is this worth? I don't think the image file name is really going to reliably yield alt img text. So, about the most one could do is possibly a site-wide empty tag. Is this really worth it for organic search? Seems like kind of a phony manipulation to appeal to a search algorithm in maybe some microscopic way. But, I could be wrong, so that is why I'm asking here. If it really matters, we'll do it. But if it doesn't, would rather not. Especially when you consider the next thing will be that having empty alt img tags will some day be a small negative, right? That would be so Google of them.
-
Is it possible to use a script to write? Alternative option is to run a screaming frog crawl looking for all images, download into excel, and use the image file name to help create a tag. That's assuming you've named the image with something specific instead of leaving it default (eg: image4893054893.jpg). Ideally you would want to include image alt tags, and many platforms can help make it easy. Could you give a little more information about your situation? There might be a pattern you can use to update on a large scale. I would not have the same tag applied to all images, because that really doesn't help search engines understand the photo and wouldn't be useful to users who have vision impairments. If you don't have the time to do it, then hire someone to assign alt tags (virtual assistant). Screaming Frog will make it really easy to find all the image files.
-
Naturally in the perfect world, meaningful attributes should be added. Assuming you're a mere mortal with a limited number of hours in the day... the best short-term solution to this is going to be having the alt attribute applied but empty.
To my knowledge (happy to be pointed towards data showing otherwise), there's no real ranking difference between these two options. The reason I prefer to add a blank alt in this instance is because assistive technology (like screen readers for vision impaired users) are going to have a much better experience on your site this way.
If you have a blank alt, the screen readers will essentially ignore the image since they're going to read " ". On the other hand, if you don't have an alt attribute in the , it's going to read the source instead. Even a short img src is going to be cumbersome, especially if you have an image-heavy site!
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
-
Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?
Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard1 -
Is it best practice to have a canonical tags on all pages
The website I'm working on has no canonical tags. There is duplicate content so rel=canonicals need adding to certain pages but is it best practice to have a tag on every page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColesNathan0 -
Google Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content. As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for. However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https. My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vikasnwu1 -
Ranking dropped after changing title tag
I recently changed my company's site homepage title tag to make it start with our target keyword. The page was originally at page #7 or #8 and dropped to page #17 directly after I changed the page title. Is this normal? Is it's a temporary drop or should I change it back to the previous title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ForumOne0 -
Best Practices for Homepage Title Tag
Hi, I would like to know if there is any update about the best practices for the homepage title tag. I mean, a couple of years ago, it was still working placing main keywords in the homepage title tag. But since the last google SERP update, the number of characters that are being shown were reduced, and now we try to work with 55 and 56 characters. That has reduced our capacity of including many keywords on the title tag. Besides, search engines are smarter now to choose the correct inner page to show in SERP. But I am wondering if the Homepage Title should have a branded orientation or should include main keywords, cause it is still working that strategy. I would appreciatte any update in this issue. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite0 -
H2 Tags- Can you have more than 1 H2 tag
Hi All, Screaming frog has identified that we have a few H2 tags on our pages , although we only have 1 H1 tag. We have numerous H3,H4's etc. I am wondering, is it good SEO to have only 1 H2 tag like with H1 tag or can you have more ? thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
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 -
Wordtracker vs Google Keyword Tool
When I find keyword opportunities in Wordtracker, I'll sometimes run them through Adwords Keyword tool only to find that Google says these keywords have 0 search volume. Would you use these keywords even though Google says users aren't searching for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0