Hey Everyone!

If you don't mind filling out this quick form about the importance of alt text is SEO I'd really appreciate it. I'm planning on writing a blog post about this topic and as a thank you I will, of course credit you, but also provide a do-follow link to your site.

Go here to fill it out: http://gmwd.us/ALTtext

Happy Holidays!

Thanks

-Seth

 

I gave a quick opinion:

 

From my limited understanding it's primarily to allow screen readers to better articulate or describe images, which might otherwise not be considered, appreciated, seen or understood by non-sighted site visitors.
Such images might improve the value or communication of a site, and so help to promote its relevance.

Edited December 23, 20169 yr by Grant Barker

I gave a quick opinion:

 

From my limited understanding it's primarily to allow screen readers to better articulate or describe images, which might otherwise not be considered, appreciated, seen or understood by non-sighted site visitors.

Such images might improve the value or communication of a site, and so help to promote its relevance.

 

This is correct, it's built for accessibility and not SEO. I think there's a misconception because search engines will favour a site that is considered accessible, but people shouldn't go trying to optimise things like alt and title tags, they have a very specific purpose, and they are already misused.

Someone shared this on Facebook recently, and I thought it might be helpful to mention it here: https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decision-tree/

Alt text is meant to be an alternative information source for those people who have chosen to disable images in their browsers and those user agents that are simply unable to “see” the images. It should describe what the image is about and get those visitors interested to see it.


I also submitted to that Link which you mentioned.

Edited January 2, 20179 yr by 9infotech

By default Images are don't have description it self. So when we search any term on search engine it is not identify what is the purpose of image. So to improve the search engine accessibility we have to give alt tag value to image. For any image on your site, the alt tag should describe what’s on it.

Edited January 6, 20179 yr by barbara

It is an alternate text for an image which is to tell viewers what the image is all about if user keeps a cursor on it for this you need to add title as well.

Alt Tags are the alternative tags which describes your images to people and also to search engines. If you have images on your web pages that are not described by an ALT tag your HTML is not valid and you are not following this Google webmaster guidelines.

Alt Tags are the alternative tags which describes your images to people and also to search engines...

 

There is no such thing as "the alt tag". It is an attribute and it should not be a "description for search engines", The purpose of the attribute is to increase accessibility. According to the HTML5 specs the value of the alt attribute should therefore NOT necessarily describe the image but the PURPOSE of the image in the context. If the image is purely decorative the attribute should still be there but the it should be empty.

 

http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/embedded-content-0.html#alt

Edited March 14, 20179 yr by Nillervision

ALT tags are the tags which describes your image on website what it is. In that tag You can place your main keyword which will let u to get better rankings in SERPs.

Search engine does not read the images directly so in this situation add alt tags. After adding atl tags google identify this is the image, this flash file etc.

After adding atl tags google identify this is the image, this flash file etc.

 

Yes the wonderful atl tag is exactly what you should use to embed your flash files

<atl data="flashfile.swf">search engines rank me up</atl> 

Edited June 13, 20179 yr by Nillervision

alt attribute. not tag

alt attribute. not tag

Probably a copy + paste job from W3Schools

Basically, Alt Tags or ALT Title are the description of images for spider or bots to understand, what kind of image is it. The Alt tag is also useful to increase the accessibility of the websites if they have images with exact Alt attributes.

If you're going to try to provide any useful info get your terminology right a tag is something that looks like this

<img src="..." alt="Something" />

the alt and src are attributes to that tag. Please do better research next time

Edited June 27, 20179 yr by webdesigner93

Just simple. It is the text, which helps search engine crawlers to index an image properly on the website.

Alt tag always been important in SEO. Alt tag makes it easy for search engines to know more about the images. Search engines can index images in a better way if you have alt tag on the images.

alt attribute. not tag