October 4, 2016
category:
Development , Search Engine Marketing , Web Marketing
posted by: Christopher Long
Marketing Tip Monday: The Difference Between Image Alt and Title Tag – SEO
There are a lot of SEO mark-ups out there and any that you are missing out on can potentially give the competition an edge over your site's rankings. Today we are going to cover the importance and difference between an image alt and title tag and how they relate to SEO.
Let's start off with the image alt tag.
Image Alt Tags
The image alt tag is a useful tool to give information about an image in case it doesn't load properly, is blocked from loading, or in case it is on a page being visited by someone with visual disabilities. It should always describe the image. Since Google places importance for SEO on the image alt tag it is important to try to also include keyword information if applicable. Remember, keyword stuffing is keyword stuffing, even on image alt tags so don't force keywords in there unless they serve a purpose.
Let's take the image below for example:
That good looking fella happens to be me. A good image alt tag might be "Capisco staff pic of Christopher Long." Now, since we are an SEO company, I might try to include some of that information to make the alt tag a bit more SEO friendly and go with: SEO manager Christopher Long. Not too shabby. Ok, so we have alt tags covered, lets move onto image title tags.
Image Title Tags
Text for an image title tags often will pop-up on a mouse hover-over. For that reason your title tag should aim to identify an image and give more information or context about it. Since it is not as important of an SEO mark-up, I wouldn't place as much emphasis on trying to fit in keywords.
Lets take the above picture again as an example. Here I would identify the image and try to add more context to it. For example: Capisco staff pic of Christopher Long taken August 2015.
The Main Takeaways
The main takeaways are this:
(1) Alt tags are important for SEO
(2) Alt tags should focus on describing the image and should include keywords if possible and natural
(3) Do not keyword stuff your alt tags
(4) Image title tags are not as important for SEO.
(5) Title tags should identify the image and provide context or more information about the image that the page visitor might be interested in.
We hope that you found this information to be useful. If you have any questions, you can email them to team@capiscomarketing.com and we will be happy to assist. Thanks for reading!
That good looking fella happens to be me. A good image alt tag might be "Capisco staff pic of Christopher Long." Now, since we are an SEO company, I might try to include some of that information to make the alt tag a bit more SEO friendly and go with: SEO manager Christopher Long. Not too shabby. Ok, so we have alt tags covered, lets move onto image title tags.