WordPress.com Forums » Tag: alt tags - Recent Posts

thistimethisspace on "Does adding both Title AND Alt -Title help SEO?"

thistimethisspace — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 04:50:20 +0000

It's the ALT tag that counts for SEO.
see: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-media-upgrade-has-major-flaws-wordpress-support-please?replies=26#post-1081464
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-media-upgrade-has-major-flaws-wordpress-support-please?replies=26#post-1081764

jumpingpolarbear on "Does adding both Title AND Alt -Title help SEO?"

jumpingpolarbear — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 03:48:17 +0000

Does adding both Title and Alt Title help SEO because the ones I have both one do better in the Stats. I stopped with both after the new WordPress update when they changed a couple of things, and even said having both could hurt your SEO

timethief on "Alt Tag SEO"

timethief — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:44:21 +0000

Having both title and alt on an image is redundant and can hurt SEO, so title was retired. The current cascade is to ignore title and to use alt. If alt is empty then caption is used. If both alt and caption are empty then title is used as the fallback.

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-media-upgrade-has-major-flaws-wordpress-support-please?replies=26#post-1081464
more here:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-media-upgrade-has-major-flaws-wordpress-support-please?replies=26#post-1081764

Accessibility
It's important to understand this from accessibility perspective. Alternate text (ALT) attribute is important in situations when an image cannot be loaded and also assists visually impaired people who use apps to read ALT attribute, so what’s in a picture is known.
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/01/08/get-the-most-out-of-image-search/

jumpingpolarbear on "Alt Tag SEO"

jumpingpolarbear — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:27:04 +0000

Thanks for the help man :)

blogpadproeditor on "Alt Tag SEO"

blogpadproeditor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:13:01 +0000

oops sorry, didn't mean to post that twice!!

blogpadproeditor on "Alt Tag SEO"

blogpadproeditor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:12:12 +0000

I believe the alt tag is the most important, as it's what screen readers use. Also Google confirmed last year that it mainly uses alt tag info to index images.

It's probably good practice to add a title tag in too though - I read somewhere that if you have a link on your image you should use the title tag to describe where you image links through to.

Sorry I can't be more specific. If in doubt its probably best to use both, but just word them slightly differently

Hope that helps! :)

blogpadproeditor on "Alt Tag SEO"

blogpadproeditor — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:02:47 +0000

I believe the alt tag is the most important, as it's what screen readers use. Also Google confirmed last year that it mainly uses alt tag info to index images.

It's probably good practice to add a title tag in too though - I read somewhere that if you have a link on your image you should use the title tag to describe where you image links through to.

Sorry I can't be more specific. If in doubt its probably best to use both, but just word them slightly differently

Hope that helps! :)

jumpingpolarbear on "Alt Tag SEO"

jumpingpolarbear — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:52:55 +0000

Just a stupid yes/no question. Now that the alt tag for images seems to be the most important, there is no gain in SEO by having a title too?

timethief on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

timethief — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:35:00 +0000

Oh! That's cool -- blog on! :)

donnaccl on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

donnaccl — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:19:44 +0000

Sorry, I hadn't saved the change, it is working now.

timethief on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

timethief — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:10:34 +0000

Umm what do you mean by "I've also made the update you suggest" please? I suggested you unlink your username from the other site linked to it, and link your wordpress.com blog to your wordpress.com username. However, you haven't done that so now I'm cogused. :S

donnaccl on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

donnaccl — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:01:36 +0000

Thanks Timethief, that answers my question. I've also made the update you suggest.

timethief on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

timethief — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:50:56 +0000

Is this the blog in question? http://cclblog.wordpress.com/

If so please unlink your username from the other site linked to it and link your wordpress.com blog to your wordpress.com username. It’s very easy to do. Here’s how to link your username to your blog in your blog Dashboard -> Users -> Personal Settings -> then scroll down to Account Details. Then scroll down to where it says ‘Website‘ select the URL for your primary wordpress.com blog starting and then save changes.

Now every time you sign into the forum we can all click on your username and your blog will be linked to it. And every time you leave a comment on a blog your username can be likewise clicked and your blog can be instantly located.

No as for your question. When we upload images we can complete the "title", "alt" and Description" fields in the op-up box that appears. This is a good thing to do from the SEO point of view However, I cannot see how we could compel bloggers to do complete the "alt" field or any other fields.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/

timethief on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

timethief — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:43:51 +0000

Please post the URL for the free blog being free hosted by wordpress.com to which you refer starting with http://

donnaccl on "Can alt tags be made a required field?"

donnaccl — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:08:59 +0000

I would like the alt tag to be required, is there a setting that can be changed to make this happen?
Thanks

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:51:47 +0000

The keyword won't appear right away after you added it, but the next time your blog is crawled by google, then it should be added to their index.

Okay, so altering the title code WILL have an impact - ultimately - on Google searches.

I'm really not sure what you mean by "breaking the link to the media library". If you're using thumbnails, are you talking bout the link to the larger version of those thumbnails

My blog is image-based, plus a tiny bit of text. If you look back at my first post, I was worried that manually altering the alt code in HTML post edit would - somehow - break the link to the image in the media library, because the codes wouldn't 'match'. Very probably a dumb question.

devblog on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

devblog — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:25:12 +0000

First off, I should know better: "alt" and "title" are not tags, they are attributes. It's Sunday, my brain is in sleep mode still...

However, I'm still unclear as to whether, when I add (after posting) a keyword to the title code of an image (as per thesacredpath's method), this is going to show up in Google searches.

The keyword won't appear right away after you added it, but the next time your blog is crawled by google, then it should be added to their index.

how do I do this without risk (if any) of breaking the link to the media library? Can I just insert an extra word in the HTML post editor?

I'm really not sure what you mean by "breaking the link to the media library". If you're using thumbnails, are you talking bout the link to the larger version of those thumbnails? if so, then you won't be breaking anything because you're not touching the "href" attribute of the "a" tag. Adding or deleting words from the "alt" attribute won't affect that link whatsoever.

As I said before, for images it's always of good practice to use the "alt" attribute, so that's the one you should amend, and don't worry about the title attribute. If it was a text link, then "title" is the important attribute here.

I recommend you reading this, it may clarify things more:

http://fadtastic.net/2007/04/19/proper-use-of-alt-and-title-attributes/

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:13:37 +0000

@devblog, no I don't care what appears when you hover an image.

However, I'm still unclear as to whether, when I add (after posting) a keyword to the title code of an image (as per thesacredpath's method), this is going to show up in Google searches.

Sorry if I am being really thick here - you've probably already answered my question but I need it spelling out.

And if it's not enough to amend the image title code - and I DO need to amend the alt tags - how do I do this without risk (if any) of breaking the link to the media library? Can I just insert an extra word in the HTML post editor?

devblog on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

devblog — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:13:34 +0000

Just to clarify this, all browsers use the "alt" tag; this tag is used by screen readers and crawlers.

Now, for the tooltip that appears when you hover an image, IE uses the alt tag value to show it, which is not correct. Firefox uses the "title" tag for the tooltip which is correct.

If you don't care about displaying the tooltip when someone (using other browsers but IE) hovers an image, then don't worry about the "title" tag; however, it is recommended that you do always use the "alt" tag.

HTH

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:39:46 +0000

p.s. the reason I want to get this exactly right is that I seem to be doing pretty well (so far, after two months) in terms of showing up high in Google (esp. the image search part) compared to other, much bigger, sites with some similar content. As well as inputting the actual text of the macro, I'm fairly sure that this is also a result of having better tagging. Therefore, it's important to me to get it right while there's still time to go back and adjust the posts I've made so far.

Huge thanks for your help - your wordpress-fu is clearly awesome!

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:25:50 +0000

Yes, when I upload an image, and title it at the upload stage (I don't add a caption or description), the image title words and alt words are identical in HTML. When I edit after posting, using the first method you described, then they're not identical.

Take the Wyatt Derp post. I've now added 'waistcoat' to the image title retrospectively, (just to give an example). Will Google bring it up as a result for 'waistcoat image macro', or ignore the word 'waistcoat' because it's in the title code, not alt code?

http://imagemacros.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/wyatt-derp/

thesacredpath on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

thesacredpath — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:50:49 +0000

As long as there is an alt tag defined, google images will pick up the image and index it.

BTW, I was viewing the source code on your page when I saw the identical alt and title tags.

thesacredpath on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

thesacredpath — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:48:29 +0000

There are issues with alt tags / title tags with some browsers so what wordpress does is to take the title tag and use it for both. IE as I remember is confused on alt and title tags.

In the HTML for the "Oh you" post I see the same tag used as title and alt. Both are there.

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:43:09 +0000

I just tried the first method, adding an extra keyword to the title. The added word appears in the title HTML in the post editor, but not in alt HTML. However, the added word does appear when you hover the mouse over the image (I always thought this was the alt tags which showed, not the title words...)

Is this sufficient for Google to find the added keyword (as I thought googlebots look specifically for alt tags)?

thesacredpath on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

thesacredpath — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:06:43 +0000

You're welcome.

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:05:14 +0000

Thank you very much. I'll try this out now.

thesacredpath on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

thesacredpath — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:00:36 +0000

The best way to do it so that the change will not only be in the post but also in the media library is to open the post in the editor, click on the image, then click on the image edit button (mountain icon) that appears at the upper left of the image and then change it there and then click "update."

You can also go into the media library anytime you want and edit the alt/title text for images. Click the show link for the image, make the change and then click save all changes.

macroland on "Altering alt tags in HTML post edit?"

macroland — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:55:10 +0000

My blog is image based, and I have been adding keywords in the title box when uploading images, to create alt tags to help Google searches. These keywords also appear as the alt tags (and title) in the HTML editor, i.e. as title = "keywords here" & alt = "keywords here"

However, sometimes I remember a keyword I should have included in the title after I've posted the image. If I were to add an extra word in the HTML editor (after alt=), (as opposed to laboriously reuploading the image and retitling it), would doing this have any adverse effects in terms of the code not matching up with the media library code? I'm just worried that altering the code might cause a break in the link to the media library image.

Thanks.

http://imagemacros.wordpress.com/

justjennifer on "Gallery Problems"

justjennifer — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:49:37 +0000

Richard, if you look in the comments on that post you might see me there. :) I've just gone a bit grayer after reading the updates. :/ Thanks for the heads up.

thesacredpath on "Gallery Problems"

thesacredpath — Sun, 04 May 2008 06:50:36 +0000

Just for grins, you might want to take a look at Road's post at onecoolsite on the image tags issues, and also read his followup in the comments.

http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/how-to-fix-alt-and-title-image-tags-in-the-new-wordpresscom/