Joost de Valk
Joost de Valk is the founder and Chief Product Officer of Yoast. He is an internet entrepreneur who, in addition to founding Yoast, has invested in and advised several startups. His core competencies are open source software development and digital marketing.
Adding pictures to your articles will encourage people to read them, and well-chosen pictures can also back up your message and get you a good ranking in image search results. But you should always remember to give your images good alt attributes. Because Alt-Text reinforces the message of your articles with search engine spiders and improves the accessibility of your website. This article will walk you through what alt and title attributes are and why you should tweak them.
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What are alt attributes and title attributes?
This is a full HTML image tag:
The alt and title attributes of an image are commonly referred to as the alt tag or alt text and title tag. But technically, they’re not tags, they’re attributes. The alt text describes the content of the image and the function of the image on the page. So if you are using an image as a button to buy Product X, the alternate text should read: “Button to Buy Product X”.
The Alt tag is used by screen readers, which are browsers that are used by people with a visual impairment, for example. These screen readers tell you what to see in the picture by reading the alt tag. The title attribute is displayed as a tooltip when you move the mouse over the element. In the case of an image button, the image title could therefore contain an additional call-to-action. However, this is not a best practice.
Each image should have an alternative text. Not just for SEO purposes, but also for accessibility. Because otherwise people with a visual impairment do not know what the picture is about. A title attribute is not required. Also, most of the time it doesn’t even make sense to add it. They are only available to people who use a mouse (or other pointing device) and the only time the title attribute is required for accessibility is enabled.