Correct image alt-txt length
-
Hi all,
I am new to SEO, and just getting up and running optimising our company's website.
We have a lot of images of our products on the website, and I would like to optimise the alt-text.
Is there a recommended maximum length for alt-text, as there is for title tags etc?
Thanks in advance,
Gareth
-
I don't think there is. Title tags and meta descriptions get cut off on the search engine results page at a certain point so that's why they have a recommended limit. As long as you don't go mad, whatever it takes to explain what is in the image. Afterall, the alt tag is there to say what the image is to people who can't see it - so just optimise from that user-friendly sense rather than thinking too much about SEO - get your keywords in if you can and if it makes sense.
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
-
Negative SEO with Google Images
We have a client in the heavy equipment industry that is trying to "push down" images in a Google image search that are associated with an accident over ten years ago. This client has launched a new website, and we have applied the best practices of on-page SEO (page titles, unique meta-descriptions, alt-image tags, focused keyword targeting, etc.). The challenge we have is with Google Image results. It seems the image results shown in the Google Image search rankings are often not inline with how images have been labeled in the alt-tag section. I have checked these images with the Moz Chrome extension, and I have often found the way the image is labeled in the alt-tag is not related to the search query made within the Google image search bar. I certainly may not be factoring in other weighted items when it comes to how images are ranked. Are there other ranking factors associated with Google Image results outside of the Alt-Image Tag? If so, what are those factors? Our ultimate goal is to provide a strategy that would allow us to tag images within this specific sector that are relevant to this specific heavy equipment product, and at the same time, "push down" the rankings of the images that have a negative association to them. We certainly want to take the right approach here, and want to earn these rankings. However, the way Google ranks images seems to be a mystery of sorts. Is there a specific strategy relevant to Google Image rankings that would fall inline with the challenge listed above? I appreciate any advice on this topic. Thank you.
Image & Video Optimization | | JaredBroussard0 -
Image results Bing vs Google
I have a website with a number of images and I have optimized all of the images on both a file name and ALT text level, relevant to content on the page they are published on. I haven't created a separate image sitemap, but the strange thing is that Google has all of my images indexed and they can be found for the right keywords, but when I look in BING! images, there is no image indexed available at all ...
Image & Video Optimization | | ConclusionDigital0 -
Https lock broken possibly due to absolute http header footer image links.
To make the https lock secure, can I make my website header and footer image URLs to relative? I have read that we need to have absolute URLs for images for good SEO. In our old ecommerce platform we made http image urls for http pages and https image urls for https pages. For our new platform this is not a standard feature and we will have to pay for customizations which we don't have any more budget for that. So will making image URLs relative create any other problems?
Image & Video Optimization | | rbai0 -
Why Google doesn't want to show our images?
Our website http://www.fiberscope.net has a good positions in search for the most of important keywords, but for some reason store's images are not visible in search results. All images have ALT attributes but represented in Google Images very poor. Any ideas and suggestions regarding this issue?
Image & Video Optimization | | Meditinc.com0 -
Images in Wordpress
Wondering how best to utilize the tags for images in Wordpress. I have these fields: Title Alternate Text Caption Description Is it important that I fill all of these fields in? And for these fields - is it best to use hyphens or underscores for SEO? Thanks.
Image & Video Optimization | | bigeyecreative0 -
Image Duplicates - Does Google Penalize on this?
Hi Mozzers, I have some doubts on the images hosted on my site. I have a single image on the website coming from 3 different locations. The locations are: img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg img1.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg www.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg Now, these 3 are the same images with the same Title (they currently do not have an Alt Tag). Now, the 2 sub-domains when opened without any internal URL, redirects to the main domain. For instance, if I access img.mydomain.com it 301 redirects to www.mydomain.com but if I access img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg I will get the image and it does not redirect. I have checked Google Image search and the full path on the sub-domain of the image is being indexed and crawled by Google Image bot. Now, this is true for both the sub-domains which act as CDN for the images. If Google does crawl all the locations which have the same image, does it cause a duplicate issue for it? I know that if it was content, I would be in trouble but does image also has the same implications. I am planning for image optimization and faced with this situation. Any answers? Cheers,
Image & Video Optimization | | RanjeetP0 -
Is a website with no images really a good idea?
I have a client who doesn't want to use any images at all on her website. It's a local hvac service provider. This thought has never even crossed my mind before. Who wouldn't want pictures? I know image optimization is important, and my mind keeps telling me that images are important for a good site and good user experience, but are they really necessary? I want a second opinion before I advise against not using any images.
Image & Video Optimization | | denarathbun0 -
What is the best way to internally link via images?
What is the best way to internally link via images? I have a website about shoes with all different brands. Let's say I'm trying to rank for "ABC sandals", and on the ABC page I have a "related brands" section with 4 logos of related sandal brands, linking to their respective page. Currently the alt text of the logos is "XYZ Logo" with the link title text "XYZ." Would it be beneficial to have change either the image alt text, or the link title text, or both to "XYZ sandals"?
Image & Video Optimization | | Hakkasan0