Comments on: ALT vs. TITLE Attributes For Images in HTML

By: dani

dani — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:14:22 +0000

Actually, what is the purpose of title attributes in links for the SEO or PageRank? They are not indexable, right?

By: Monica

Monica — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:25:29 +0000

I’m finding that in IE 8 I can get the title but in compatibility mode it still shows my alt tag information rather than title information. Also when I go to a different computer title does not override alt in IE 7 systems.

IE 6 of course shows alt information. Am I correct that if I want to display a specific bit of information I have to actually duplicate in alt and title?

By: seb

seb — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:05:07 +0000

nice explanation! Now I understand the difference between each tag.

I always copy/paste my alt text tag in my title tag…Do you know if this has a side effect?

Tks!

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:34:26 +0000

@Ben Bard: Yes, you are right. That was a slip. If you look under ‘Title’, I explained it more accurately. ‘ALT’ is used by default in IE. And the ‘TITLE’ is used by other browsers. But now in IE 7/8, the TITLE attribute overrides ALT. Thanks for catching that.

@Kurt: Wow, 30%! That is quite surprising. When it is night there, it is daytime in the Americas… So, we might be sending you that traffic.

By: Kurt Avish

Kurt Avish — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:33:53 +0000

I wont hide this. But about 30% of my google traffic is from google image. However weird as it is… i only get traffic from google image when I am sleeping lol. I mean when its night here

By: Ben Barden - Blog Tips

Ben Barden - Blog Tips — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:26:28 +0000

Nice summary, but I believe this is incorrect:

“Additionally, alt text is typically shown when users hover over an image.”

This only happens in Internet Explorer. IE wrongly uses the alt attribute as title text. This may have changed in IE7/8 but it was certainly incorrect in IE6.

By: WordPress links week 4 - 2009 | WPStart.org - WordPress themes, plugins and news

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:45:16 +0000

[...] ALT vs. TITLE Attributes For Images in HTML [...]

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:22:57 +0000

@Ben: Yes, it is a simple step and it does a whole lot for optimization.@Kurt: You'd be surprised how much traffic people get for images. But it also helps the overall keyword optimization of the page.@Kim: I also rarely use titles, especially on WordPress-driven websites. But when I hand-code sites I usually do add alt and titles.@Nihar: About 1.5% of my visits from Google come from the 'image' search. Do you get a lot more visits from images.google.com? What's your relative percentage?

By: Nihar

Nihar — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:22:21 +0000

Nice tutorial for those who have the confusiont between the both. I always use both alt and title and I also get some search visits from images.google.com

By: Kim Woodbridge

Kim Woodbridge — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:10:44 +0000

I try to use alt for images but never use title. I actually didn’t know what it was for so thanks for the write-up

By: Kurt Avish

Kurt Avish — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:49:40 +0000

Adding the alt text for sure works. Its mostly good for google image traffics.

By: Ben Pei

Ben Pei — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:25:53 +0000

I see high importance in having ALT for your images because like you said, google don’t see the images, they look at the ALT. People often overlook this simple step when it comes to on page SEO.

By: Velvet Blues

Velvet Blues — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 01:34:28 +0000

@stratos: You’ll have to send me the link. Perhaps I missed something.

@Jen: Yes, many people see images tags as another place to stuff keywords.

@Ajith: Indeed. And, links can use title attributes as well. I’ve seen some people go so far as to stuff keywords in all four locations: anchor text, image alt text, image title text, link title text… They’ve got SEO down to a science.

And apparently, you know all about this. …your theory. I don’t know about the double impact, but by having such a high concentration of keywords in that location, I don’t think that Google will have any problem ascertaining the subject…

By: Ajith Edassery | DollarShower

Ajith Edassery | DollarShower — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:05:38 +0000

‘alt’ is the keyword stuffing opportunity as well Probably it can have a double impact when image itself is within an anchor. Anchor text and img alt can then contain keywords. My theory

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:40:38 +0000

I have been paying more attention to images recently and have noticed on most peoples sites and blog that they name the image after the title or main keywords in the post.

Your explaination made me understand why it is important to do that and how it helps in searches. Thanks!

By: stratosg

stratosg — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:30:11 +0000

nice sum up of the two thingies. i remember a smalltalk a few days back on twitter on this. next time i’ll have a link to point out