Comments on: Captions – Alt Tags and The All Seeing Eye

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:19:48 +0000

@Allison - First, I want to make sure we aren't confusing terms. The text that is shown when you mouse over an image is the "Title Tag" If the author didn't fill in the title tag no text will be displayed. The Alt tag is the alternative text that is read by special reader software for the visually impaired. Alt tag text is never displayed. This tag also has to be filled in or it is skipped by the software. Title Tag text is displayed in Google Chrome "if it exists." a good check is to mouse over the image of the all seeing eye. There is a title tag there "google is the all seeing eye". Dave

By: Allison

Allison — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:10:48 +0000

Does anyone know why google chrome does not show ALT text when you brush over images?
Is it a setting within the browser?

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:09:37 +0000

@Daniel Bates - Using the alt tag is considered "best practices" it is like making sure your site is W3C compliant. It is why we as a society have handicapped parking. For as why would WP make the caption the alt tag. That is the good question. It shouldn't. It should be the caption tag only and allow us to set the the alt tag. I wish more of people were not IE Handicapped. FF provides a much richer browsing experience. Where many are missing the boat is in not using keyword in the image file name. That is where you can put them and it is perfectly acceptable and always will be.

By: Daniel Bates

Daniel Bates — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:11:20 +0000

I get the point of the article...I can't figure out why wordpress 2.7 now assumes your caption is the alt tag and you have to edit the image after inserting, click a tab and then finally get to the alt tag, when you should be able to add it before inserting...I guess my question is if you're writing for real estate and you use a picture of a dog that's fine, but why are you going to waste your time using the alt text at all? What percent of my readers are visually impaired? .05% maybe. I know for a fact that over 50% of my readers are Firefox impaired (on insert any NON-IE browser), so I'm going to focus on resolving those issues with my spare time not describing fluffy bunnies that don't relate to my keywords, right? Daniel Bates´s last blog post..McClellanville Middle School Closes

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:17:48 +0000

Rob,

You might want to re-read the post. Putting keywods in an alt tag is spam. The purpose of the alt tag is so visually impaired have a description of the image read to them.

Matt is telling you anything that doesn’t describe the image is spam

By: Rob Saxe

Rob Saxe — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:17:26 +0000

Here’s a link to a video from Matt Cutts about alt tags.

http://www.patdoyle.com/alt-tag-for-images-can-bring-more-visitors-from-google/193/

Point taken and understood. I get what you’re saying and what Matt is saying here is that as long as you’re not spamming, you’re good. At least that’s what I’m getting.

Rob Saxe´s last blog post..Monet at Diamond Creek

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:09:01 +0000

Rob,

They used to say put white text all over you page with keywords and it will get you great ranking, and it did for awhile. Rank today, pay tomorrow. But you can get great rankings using alt tags for what they were intended. Google has put out the word and the warning. Play with hand grenades at your own risk. But don’t say you weren’t warned.

Have a great week

Dave

By: Rob Saxe

Rob Saxe — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:05:43 +0000

@Dave Smith - I've been studying SEO, images and alt tags since last night and this is the first place I've seen it said that alt tags aren't and shouldn't be considered in SEO. One of the highest traffic real estate sites I've seen does this, she recommends it and says it responsible for huge traffic on her site. I'm going with that. Rob Saxe´s last blog post..Monet at Diamond Creek

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:34:47 +0000

Matt,

I think the place to work in the keyword creatively would be in the file name and not the alt tag. I believe it is a rare instance when the alt tag describing the image would have a keyword as a part of that description.

wpReality,

Yes ALT tags are important. but not so sure about SEO. getting images in google search results are as easy as a single checkbox in google webmaster tools.

Good file names, and descriptive alt tags of the image.

I too like the lightbox plugin. I’ve used it a lot less with the captions being available but I really like that plugin.

BUT HERE IS THE POINT OF THE POST. Not SEO, Not Keywords. The POINT. If you are using Captions Don’t forget to change the alt tag.

This might have gotten lost in the discussion somewhere along the line.

Thanks for all who have added to this discussion and post.

By: wpReality wordpress real estate theme

wpReality wordpress real estate theme — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:28:33 +0000

First of all ALT tags on images are VERY important to SEO. Just take a look at google image search and see what I mean. On top of that I recommend using the jQuery Lightbox plugin with the ALT tags to display images with a professional description via the ALT tag.