Noob Q - ALT/Title image tags and SEO

**cat7ken** · 02-09-09

I've got myself a little confused here. I've been adding ALT tags to many of my images with suitable keywords in the alt="description". I am sure these were showing in IE and Firefox as I hover the mouse over the image, in fact they still do in the Frontpage preview page. Now all of a sudden they are not showing in IE and Firefox - will Google still be seeing them?

I noticed a couple of imported images came with title tags and these show on a mouse hover.

What's best for SEO alt tags or title tags or both? Should my alt tags be showing while hovering?

This is basic noob stuff I know but it's pestering me.

Cheers

Ken

**pete_coles** · 02-09-09

ALT tags are predominatly for screen readers to describe the image to a blind user. Although this can pertain to SEO too I'd keep them relevent to the image, SEO and accessibility rules tend to run in tandem alot of the time, IE if your making an image more accessible to users by adding an ALT tag, you'll also be making it more accessible to search engines too.

If they were showing up on hover and now they're not, my suspicion would be an unclosed tag somewhere. Google will still see them (the big G don't need to hover).

**Jack Russell** · 02-09-09

Originally Posted by cat7ken

I've got myself a little confused here. I've been adding ALT tags to many of my images with suitable keywords in the alt="description". I am sure these were showing in IE and Firefox as I hover the mouse over the image, in fact they still do in the Frontpage preview page. Now all of a sudden they are not showing in IE and Firefox - will Google still be seeing them?

I noticed a couple of imported images came with title tags and these show on a mouse hover.

What's best for SEO alt tags or title tags or both? Should my alt tags be showing while hovering?

This is basic noob stuff I know but it's pestering me.

Cheers

Ken

Although it is not shown in Firefox or Internet Explorer , Google will crawl it as it is a part of your website code. Alt tags and Title tags are important as they are part of keyword density of a website. They both are important in terms of on page SEO.

**kcheung** · 02-09-09

don't forget to SEO the title of the image as a file too (i.e. SEOkeywords.jpg)! you'd be surprise how many people to searches on images and I've gotten a fair bit of traffic this way as well.