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Image Alt And Title

Discussion in 'SEO Search Engine Optimisation' started by boxerdog, Sep 6, 2011.

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  1. boxerdog

    boxerdog Well-Known Member

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    What would I put for these for say a picture of a car on my site?

    Title text
    &
    Alt text

    thanks.
     
  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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  3. peter_w United Kingdom

    peter_w Active Member

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    You don't need to use title for SEO purposes, most crawlers (including Google) only look at alt.

    The alt text is basically a description for the image - so if it's a blue Ford Fiesta... That's your alt text.
     
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  4. boxerdog

    boxerdog Well-Known Member

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    Excellent thanks for that.
     
  5. denchomsky United Kingdom

    denchomsky Well-Known Member

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    Not necessarily true, if the image is linking to another page there should be a title tag and it should describe the action of the link.

    So lets say the picture of the ford Fiesta linked to a gallery of ford Fiestas, the title tag would be "Link to ford Fiesta Gallery", and this can be beneficial for SEO.
     
  6. peter_w United Kingdom

    peter_w Active Member

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    Last edited: Sep 6, 2011
  7. denchomsky United Kingdom

    denchomsky Well-Known Member

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  8. peter_w United Kingdom

    peter_w Active Member

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  9. Aegean Greece

    Aegean Active Member

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    I would say to the OP to use both as they were meant to be used, with the ALT tag used as an image description such as "image of a blue Ford Escort", the TITLE used as in "1993 blue Ford Escort", and much more importantly the image filename bluefordescort.jpg

    This will not only fully comply with Google's guidelines but using the descriptive filename also improves positions in google images and well as helping a little with onpage seo.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2011
  10. Skinner

    Skinner Well-Known Member

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    I use alt to describe the image as lots of blind peoples readers read the alt out to them, so a simple description of the image seems to work best.

    Title Tags I sometimes use for a condensed almost keyword version of the alt tag.

    I use this method simply because google use this on their own site, so if they do it, maybe it helps.

    Title Tags are sometimes used with JavaScript too, so make sure you have java that finds elements by title as it can send JS all funky.
     
  11. denchomsky United Kingdom

    denchomsky Well-Known Member

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    I don't think there is a right and wrong answer.

    According to W3.org - Setting the [title] attribute on a link allows user agents (visual and non-visual) to tell users about the nature of the linked resource.

    This of course does not just apply to the title attribute of the <img> tag but any link.

    D
     
  12. Ashton Canada

    Ashton Well-Known Member

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    Images should not have a title tag. The link that wraps the image should have the title tag.
     
  13. jj1

    jj1 Active Member

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    Personally, I use the same text for alt and title - from memory, alt text doesn't show in Firefox whereas title text does.

    I work the odd keyword into the alt and title text where relevant but don't overdo things. As someone said, if the car is a "Blue Ford Fiesta Y registration, automatic, air-conditioned, heated seats etc etc" then that's informative to the viewer and contains some keywords for the search engines.
     
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