How long should the Image Alt Text be for SEO?
-
When it comes to creating the alternate text for images, what is the character length that I need stay under to rank well?
-
The images on your page should be relevant to your pages content, so describe them with an alt tag naturally will add relevance. The length is not important, but I would not stuff they will a long list of keywords.
-
This is just my feel for this after watching my own sites pull in thousands of visits per day from image search, but I have not done systematic study.... and Google could have changed even if I did systematic study.
First, I say that character count is irrelevant. What you need to focus on is the keywords you want to be visible for.
If you are optimizing for image search, I would use very specific keywords. The exact keywords that you want your image to rank for. AND, most important, the exact keywords that people will relate your image to. If you call it a duck and it ain't a duck, that blows the value of alt text. Google knows a little about this stuff, even if they make the news by messing up once in a while.
If you are optimzing for websearch, I would use the specific keywords for my webPAGE on the highest image in the code of the page. It is really important to give people an image that their query relates to. If your page is about ducks and you image is a weasel, they are going to leave.
After that, it I mix it up, keeping relevant to the image and relevant to the page.
-
There isn't really any limit, like there is for page titles, meta descriptions, etc. Typically you'll want the ALT text to explain what's in the image--the original purpose was to show the user what the image was before it was downloaded, and also for vision impaired folks, the screen readers would read to them what was in the image by reading the ALT text.
If you're looking for the image to reinforce the relevance of the page for the page's target topic, then make sure that the topic term is in the ALT text, usually as part of a long phrase or sentence. If you're looking for the image to rank well in Google image search, then I'd keep the ALT text to just what the target term is (and of course make sure the page title reflects that term as well).
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
-
Any Advice for Image SEO?
I have a client who is very concerned about reputation management ... Google his name and some very provocative photos show up in Google Images. There are a couple of semi-famous people who share his name, and my plan is to backlink their images that currently rank positions 50 - 100 to try and push them up. Should I backlink the page that contains the image or the image itself? Any other recommendations?
Image & Video Optimization | | julie-getonthemap1 -
Why are my blog slideshow images not indexed?
I'm managing a design blog hosted on WordPress. Each "design project" article includes a slideshow with additional images (and captions) for the project - these are images and text not found in the article itself. Every slide has the same page path as the article, but a different query param at the end. So if the article is /article the first slide would be /article?slide=1 for example. I'm having two issues: The slideshow images don't seem to be getting indexed. Screaming Frog reports duplicate meta descriptions and title tags for each slideshow page (same meta as article). I want to do what's best overall from an SEO perspective. Having the slideshow images show in Google image search is a must. And having the captions indexed might help too? But I want the Google image results linking to the article and not the individual slideshow pages. And I don't want duplicate meta issues. What's the best thing to do? Submit a sitemap that lists both article and slideshow images? "Rel canonical" the param'd slideshow urls to the base article url (not sure this makes total sense, since slide content is different from the article)? Get rid of slideshow altogether and put images in body? Some combo of these? Hopefully this makes sense. Any thoughts appreciated!
Image & Video Optimization | | theoHP0 -
Video SEO: Should I add Video Transcriptions to You Tube Videos Even with Google CC?
So, You Tube allows plenty of room from descriptions. I think 5,000 characters. Google does a poor Closed Caption of our audio. Should I also be adding accurate transcriptions to the description field in YouTube to help my Video SEO. What are the pro's cons and is it worth doing?
Image & Video Optimization | | BlairKuhnen1 -
Video and SEO
I am planning on placing some short how to videos on my site. My question is what is the best way to implement video. Youtube Vimeo Self Hosted Video How do I ensure that the video can be viewed by all devices if it is self hosted?
Image & Video Optimization | | bronxpad0 -
Youtube Channel, Video SEO
I am providing some SEO consulting for a friend's company. They are an Investment Research and Portfolio Management firm. They started a blog about a year ago with most of their posts being short Youtube videos between 3 to 10 minutes in length, providing their take on what is going on in with the markets at the moment. Additionally, they've created a youtube channel which has a little over 1,500 subscribers. The videos do fairly decent getting between 1,500 to 20,000 views (the later happens when a big financial blog links to them) but they are not taking full advantage of this great content in my opinion i.e hosting videos with a 3rd party like Wistia. I think they should begin using Wistia or Vimeo Pro to maximize the SEO benefits as well as gather analytics about views. Then after they've milked them all they can put them on their youtube channel and target them for different keywords. My question is, should they go back and switch out the videos on the old posts with videos hosted by a 3rd party, submit sitemaps, etc. or should they just leave them the way they are and only host new videos with a 3rd party? I think they should switch out the old youtube videos but am not sure if this could cause any negative repercussions.
Image & Video Optimization | | TVI0 -
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 -
Do citations in foreign languages help for local SEO in English?
Hi, All! If you're doing trying to get a foreign site (in English) to rank for local SEO in that country (in English),.do citations in the native language help? Google does seem to know that the business name in English and the foreign language are the same (e.g. if you search in English, it will return some results in the foreign language with the business name in the foreign language bolded). And addresses Google can also tell are the same, as evidenced by Google map searches in both languages pinpointing the same location. So - are citations in the foreign language relevant to help the page rank higher for a local query in English? Any thoughts? Thanks, Aviva
Image & Video Optimization | | debi_zyx0 -
Google Images
Hi, I'm setting up a Barcelona guide as a hobby: barcelonacitybreak.com. Naturally I take care to use good alt-tags, checking Google images I see one of the photos I took listed as number one: "hibernian bookstore barcelona". There is no doubt that this is the photo I took myself, but when I place the mouse over the photo the origin is listed as:http://www.auladirectiva.com/. What is even more worrying though is that when I press the image I automatically download this: "Antispy 2011" from http://protectionxpscannermaster.com! Evidently some kind of "anti-virus" program. How is this possible?
Image & Video Optimization | | vibelingo0