Which takes precedence - Title or Alt text?

[ruggy]

Hi,

Suppose you have an image link as follows:

<a href="blah.htm" title="keyword of linked to page"><img src="icon.gif" alt="description of icon"></a>

Which will recieve the most weight? The href title text or the image alt text?

Thanks in advance...

Rug

[Andy]

I think the image alt tag is most relevant for ranking of your image in image search. I also like to include the keyword in the image file name since this and the alt tag are all the search engine has to tell what your image is about.

Also, the results are ordered by the size of the image so you can make a small, medium and large image for the images that you want to be optimized for image search.

But to get relevance for the page that the image is on, a relevant title tag should help but I don't have any evidence, it's just a gut feel. The title tag is handy to encourage visitors to click the link since it pops up in some browsers.

You can always do some searches on your keywords and check out what seems to be working for your competitors.

[ruggy]

Hi Andy,

My objective is to boost relevancy of the linked to page. Aaron Wall suggests here (http://www.seobook.com/link-title-attribute-vs-image-alt-tags-which-better) that the alt text is weighted more aggressively than the link title so having your keyword in the alt text is better than having it in the link title text in terms of boosting relevancy of the linked to page.

But is this the correct use of the alt tag? The alt tag should techincally be used to describe the image but if the image is also a link then can we get away with describing the linked to page in the image as opposed to just describing the content of the image i.e. use the alt text as anchor text? If we can then we can boost the relvancy of the linked to page.

What about using the alt text as the anchor text and the IMAGE title to describe the image?

(I appreciate anchor text would be better than image but that isn't an option in this scenario)

Rug

[Andy]

I don't even want to read anything about gaming the system. The fact is that the ALT tag describes the image and the TITLE tag of an HTML link should describe what the destination page is about. So, for SEO you need to weave your keywords into these text elements.

Forget about trying to "get away" with things.

For your image you can have an alt tag of "ultimate bouncy castle" and for your page/link about bouncy castles you have a title tag of "Experience mega-fun bouncing around on our bouncy castles". So we got the keywords in the tags and we are doing nothing wrong in mis-describing things. Get it?

[Manu]

Just remember one thing. Your alt description must be parallel or go along with the size of the image. For example, never use 2 lines of alt text for an image of size 1*1.

[donecweb]

Just remember one thing. Your alt description must be parallel or go along with the size of the image. For example, never use 2 lines of alt text for an image of size 1*1.

Why would that be?

[ruggy]

a 1 by 1 image is usually used a spacer. In this case I would use an empty alt tag.

[donecweb]

I will try again.

Just remember one thing. Your alt description must be parallel or go along with the size of the image.

Why do we need to make our alt description go along with the size of the image?

For example, never use 2 lines of alt text for an image of size 1*1.

IMO you should never use a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image as it is too much like a hidden image or trying to cheat when you use such a small pixel image.

[Manu]

 
Why do we need to make our alt description go along with the size of the image?IMO you should never use a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image as it is too much like a hidden image or trying to cheat when you use such a small pixel image.

That will help you in your SEO effort IMO.

[donecweb]

That will help you in your SEO effort IMO.

I understand that the Alt tag can help but what I don't understand is the "go along with the size of the image" I mean if you have a 100 x 100 pixel image and a 400 x 300 pixel image how do you make the Alt tag "go along with the size"?

[Manu]

Well its completely based on experimental evidence. I found it when one of my websites was punished for having small size and large alt text. And after that I did some experiments to reach to the conclusion. Also in my view, google does not pay any emphasis on logo and header images.

This of course is in my limited humble view.

[donecweb]

Well its completely based on experimental evidence. I found it when one of my websites was punished for having small size and large alt text. And after that I did some experiments to reach to the conclusion. Also in my view, google does not pay any emphasis on logo and header images.

This of course is in my limited humble view.

From your findings can you give some indication of what the proper ratio of pixel size to quantity of text?

[jamesfoster]

Alt text is more important than title.

[Manu]

From your findings can you give some indication of what the proper ratio of pixel size to quantity of text?

hmmmmmmm,,,,,, Well that's a tough one. I don't have any symmetric formula for this. I always try to compensate the amount of space occupied by the image with text. Keep of the amount of text that you think can be placed on the space (normal text font of the page) if no image would have been there. Try to make meaningful sentences with your main keywords in it. If you want to try Grey side of it, never use a blank image to use alt text keywords. Create shades on images that you think would be tough for spiders to understand. Never use long keywords in images names .for e.g. apply-for-a-credit-card.jpg That does not help but has negative effect. Try to use a beautiful/ well suited to eye webpage. Good looking pages tend to rank better. If you want to rank for a keyword on image search, never directly link to that image. Header and Logo images are not counted at all, so you can discount them as well. never use the same alt text for 2 images on a webpage. Sites with the same layout (same logo and header images structure, same css, footer text) tend to rank better as well.

[jbladeus]

Definitely the alt text.
Title text could be added to any tag and therefore is susceptible to keyword spamming.

Here's a good read on this topic:
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2008/02/06/alt-tag-vs-link-title-attribute-which-is-more-important/