One of the most effective ways of making your content more interesting and eye catching to the reader is through the use of images. However, just throwing an image onto your site and calling it a day will not work for long. There are a few things you need to follow.
First, there’s image optimization:
Image optimization involves making the image file size smaller so your website loads faster. In the online world, bigger is not better (sorry folks!). I get into image optimization a bit in my post on resizing your images using picknic.com. However, this post will cover the use of ALT and TITLE attributes for your images.
Using ALT and TITLE attributes:
So you are thinking, alright, I’ve re-sized my image, uploaded it to my website, job done. Well, not really. See, according to W3C (short for World Wide Web Consortium), “it is a good practice to include the “alt” attribute for each image on a page, to improve the display and usefulness of your document for people who have text-only browsers.”
What does this mean? Basically, it means that in cases where images are not rendered normally on the web page, the “alt” text displays alternative information about the image. This is what search engines rely on when trying to understand what the image is about.
Now what about the “title” attribute? The title describes to the reader what the image is about. On some browsers, if you hover your mouse over the image, the title will be displayed. The title attribute is used for advisory information. What the heck does that mean?
Here are some synonyms for advisory:
- Optional
- Suggested
- Recommended
- Consultative
The alt attribute describes the image with use of alternate text and the title attribute is additional information about the image. I like to liken it to, the alt attribute being the cake and the title being the icing on the cake. Make sense?
Now that we got that out of the way, what do we do with this information and how important is the addition of alt and title tags to your images?
After a bit of investigative work 
, it appears they both have relevance, however, more emphasis seems to be placed on the alt attribute. It is in your best interest to use both, but if you are going to pick and choose, then at least make sure you have an alt attribute assigned to your images.
Here’s a short video on alt attributes by Google Advisor, Matt Cutts. It’s short and simple, but he does a good job at describing alt attributes and how to effectively use it with your images.
How do you make the most out of your alt and title attributes? This would be a good opportunity for you to utilize your keywords; make sure to keep the keywords in your alt and title attribute different to prevent keyword stuffing.
When writing your alt attributes, you’ll want to make sure the description is relevant to the image. I like to ask myself, what is the image conveying? If the image were to disappear, what text could I put in place that would accurately describe it?
Utilize the title attribute for any additional information you would like the reader to know. If the image was linked, this would be a good time to add a citation for the URL. What additional information can you provide to the reader that is relevant to the topic at hand?
I know this can be a bit confusing at first, but with a bit of practice I’m sure you’ll have it down in no time. Have you been using ALT attributes?
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Hi newbizblogger team.U are exaclty saying right .At the time of posting everyone don’t care about image .specially one load the image and run fast .thanks for make fact and importance.
.-= jai prakash´s last blog ..Google rolled out into Google SSL Beta Version =-.
Your welcome Jai! Not sure if it’s a matter of people not caring or just unaware of the importance of alt tags. It’s really not covered as much as other seo factors. But every little helps right?
Hi newbizblogger team.U are exaclty saying right .At the time of posting everyone don’t care about image .specially one load the image and run fast .thanks for make fact and importance.
.-= jai prakash´s last blog ..Google rolled out into Google SSL Beta Version =-.
Your welcome Jai! Not sure if it’s a matter of people not caring or just unaware of the importance of alt tags. It’s really not covered as much as other seo factors. But every little helps right?
Best SEO for image is adding ALT and title attribute to it because search engine will read these text and show image in search result. they can become traffic generator if used properly
Hi Ashutosh,
You're definitely on point here! It's good to make people aware of the benefits of alt and titles especially in using your keywords in them, thus 'helping' search engines find you.
Best SEO for image is adding ALT and title attribute to it because search engine will read these text and show image in search result. they can become traffic generator if used properly
Hi Ashutosh,
You're definitely on point here! It's good to make people aware of the benefits of alt and titles especially in using your keywords in them, thus 'helping' search engines find you.
this code will let you hide your music player and it will still play, it will not let you use scroll bars however, if anyone knows of a code that will let you use scrolls please let me know.
this code will let you hide your music player and it will still play, it will not let you use scroll bars however, if anyone knows of a code that will let you use scrolls please let me know.
this code will let you hide your music player and it will still play, it will not let you use scroll bars however, if anyone knows of a code that will let you use scrolls please let me know.
What is the maximum number of alt text that can be included safely within an image. Safe in terms of getting ban from Google.
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Not sure what you mean about maximum number but several words including your keyword phrase is fine as long as you don’t venture into the side of keyword stuffing; that is using the keyword repetitively for several images on that page or excessive keywords for your ALT text. I hope that answers your question.
@Michale.
First of all thank you for finding time to reply.
My question was, suppose we are having images only for a page with little text, and embeds content related to the page in the image alt, suppose a paragraph of 300 characters which is related to the image and site. Will this be a bad impact.
No keyword stuffing at all with repeated keywords or keyword phrases. But seems as so many images in the page, image alt will be more than the text content, and as all the images are of similar subject, some word may repeat, like if images of cats, the word cat or cats may repeat in all images.
Hope you got it.
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Sorry, I’m not sure I understand. But I think you mean you may have a page with multiple images on it and very little text. Would it be bad if you have alt text for all the images ???? The answer would be no. However, I’m assuming you are using the alt text to provide a brief description of the image. For example – pet collar image – where pet collar is the keyword. This is fine.
You don’t want to make a very long description for the alt text; just something brief that describes the image. If you have multiple images then I would try to make the alt text different for each image.
I hope this clarifies things.
Michale, thank you for the reply.Confused?, Am the same person you are having a chat about alt text above. Hey do you have any tip to include alt or similar data tags in flash?..
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Not 100% sure but try wrapping your flash code with this
flash embed here
Will try that for sure. May let know the inference there after.
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The main idea is that “alternate” text is visible when media is unavailable (Or for search engines) and “title” text comes as a tooltip.
Infact, you can use title even with other tags. It can help add special notes or personalize your content.
For ex, my post link has loads of title attributes used everywhere, just to make the post a bit fun to read
(Hold mouse on random parts of text to check it out!)
Keep posting more tips!
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