Image Alt tags--always include the targeted keyword?
-
Question for all the SEO's out there. Do you always include your target keyword in the image alt tag?
For example, if you had an article on osteoarthritis, and you included a photo of an old man, would you put "old man on a bench" or "old man suffering from osteoarthritis" -- even though you have no idea if the old man suffers from osteoarthritis?
-
Related-ish question:
I have a site-wide banner on a website with a theme related to mine with the alt tag containing an exact-match keyword.
It's on 2,500 pages. Post-Penguin, am I inviting trouble? Should I play it safe and have it on, say, just a handful of pages -- or even just the homepage?
-
As a photographer in a past life, what I did that did not work was use the same tag on every image in a post. That doesn't work.
What does work is variety. Use the keyword, use related words, and use descriptive image words. Say you had 3 images to keyword:
(image of an older guy on a bench) alt="osteoarthritis frequently affects elderly men"
(doctor, any health image) alt="healthy screenings can help reduce the symptoms of osteoarthritis"
(drug you're selling) alt="prevent joint pain and reduce osteoarthritis symptoms with X"
-
Agree with Davinia 100%. Write alt tags for the user - how would you BEST describe the image in a few words? I try to include a few keywords/phrases but if I have a page with 10 images I'm not going to include the same keyword(s) in every single image - probably around 50-80% of the images.
-
I would use the keyword in a keyword phrase and limit to 2-3 words, so something like "Man with osteoarthritis" or "Osteoarthritis affects everyone".
Remember alt tags are also used for usability, so if someone say has a computer that reads them the on-page content (e.g. a visually impaired person) you want your content to clearly and accurately explain what's on the page.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Importance (or lack of) Meta keywords tags and Tags in Drupal
I'm wondering should I put any effort in making Meta Keywords tags for my pages or normal Tags (they're separate in Drupal), since apparently first are not considered by most of search engines, while not sure about normal tags. Obviously SERPS has to determine partial valu of the page by content, thus consider keywords / tags to some extend. What's your opinion on that. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Optimal_Strategies1 -
How To Optimize A Page For Multiple Keywords
Hi Guys, In this video by Brian Dean he talks about how to go about optimising for multiple keywords. He basically said the main factors for optimising a page for multiple keywords are the following: Identify other keywords with same search intent as your primary keyword. Add them to title tag strategically, don't stuff them in there. Add as many of those keywords as h2 tags into the content, again when it makes sense. Are there any other more advanced ways you can use to optimize a page for multiple keywords with same search intent that could be good? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts110 -
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
Cross Domain Rel Canonical tags vs. Rel Canonical Tags for internal webpages
Today I noticed that one of my colleagues was pointing rel canonical tags to a third party domain on a few specific pages on a client's website. This was a standard rel canonical tag that was written Up to this point I haven't seen too many webmasters point a rel canonical to a third party domain. However after doing some reading in the Google Webmaster Tools blog I realized that cross domain rel canonicals are indeed a viable strategy to avoid duplicate content. My question is this; should rel canonical tags be written the same way when dealing with internal duplicate content vs. external duplicate content? Would a rel=author tag be more appropriate when addressing 3rd party website duplicate content issues? Any feedback would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications0 -
My site is always in the top 4 on google, and sometimes goes to #2\. But the site at #1 is always at #1 .. how can i beat them?
So i'm sure this is a very generic question.. of course everyone wants to be #1. We are an ecommerce web site. We have all sorts of products, user ratings, and are loved by our customers. We sell over 3 million a year. So let me give you some data.. First of all one of the sites that keeps taking the #2 or #3 spot is amazons category for what we sell.. (i'm not sure if I should say who we are here.. as I don't want the #1 spot to realize we are trying to take them over!) Amazon of course has a domain authority of 100. But they never take the #1 spot. The other site that takes the #2 and #3 spot is not even selling anything. Happens to be a technical term's with the same name wikipedia page! (i wish google would figure out people aren't looking for that!) Anyways.. every day we bouce back and forth between #4 and #2.. but #1 never changes.. Here are the stats of us verse #1 from moz: #1: Page Authority: 56.8, Root Domains Linking to page: 158, Domain Authority: 54.6: root domains linking to the root domain 1.42k my site: Page Authority: 60.6, Root domains linking to the page: 562, Domain Authority: 52.8: root domains linking to the root domain: 1.03k So they beat us in domain authority SLIGHTLY and in root domains linking to the root domain. So SEO masters.. what do I do to fix this? Get better backlinks? But how.... I can't just email GQ and ask them to write about us can I? I'm open to all things.. Maybe i'm not using moz data correctly.. We should at least be #2. We get #2 every other day.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 88mph0 -
Plural versions of keywords
I am a Magician and optimising my site for local seo mainly. I would imagine this will affect any local business but I woule like some input from the community on how to handle variations of the same keyword. e.g I am a Magician and I am based in Hampshire So I have created a page for Hampshire and from previous keyword research optimised it of Magician Hampshire. However there are many more variations of the keyword. e.g Magicians Hampshire, Magicians in Hampshire, Hampshire Magician, Magician in Hampshire, Close up Magicians in Hampshire, Hampshire Magicians, Magicians near Hampshire, Local Hampshire Magicians. The list goes on but I can not find an answer on wether I should have a separate page/blog post for each of these keywords or include them in the same page. If I include them in the same page how to not make it spammy I am sure this is the same for electricians, dentists, hairdressers etc so am hoping there is a common answer to a problem that has been puzzling me for a long time Many Thanks Roger
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rnperki
http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/0 -
How To Create Dynamic WordPress Tags
Does anyone know how to make WordPress "tag" pages automatically generate a description based on the posts included in the tag? I have a lot of tags, and most of them rank well for long tail keywords. However I have noticed that although they have a dynamically generated "title meta tag" they do not generate a "description meta tag". I know WordPress lets you customize the description for each tag, but I have way to many for that. I need the description meta to be auto generated from the posts that are being tagged, rather than not including one at all. Does anyone know how to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Keyword weight in Domain Name
Hi All, I'm looking for some advice on URL structure. Our domain name includes 1/2 of many keyword strategies that we're considering. For example our domain is like, dive.com Keyword strategies that we're looking at targeting would include things like, "dive shop", "dive equipment" etc etc Are we competitive to have a structure like this? dive.com/shop/ dive.com/equipment/ Or will this structure yield stronger results? dive.com/dive-shop/ dive.com/dive-equipment/ Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks! Malcolm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0