Read any guide to search engine optimization and you’ll find that you are supposed to tag all your photos with ALT tags and image titles.
Try to figure out what that actually means and you’ll lose your mind.
I spent several hours searching and while I found a number of informative articles, still found myself confused as to how ALT tags and image tags actually differ. My dear friend and web guru Steve Fine, who also happens to run the best design firm in San Francisco, tried to explain it to me:
ALT TAG = what a screen reader would see. for example: search crawlers for SEO or site readers for the blind.
IMAGE TITLE = a pop-over text caption that provides embellishment to an image for people rolling over images on websites
does this help?
No, actually, but finally he was able to put it in words that even I can understand.
use-case: see image below.
Finally, I understand
ALT TAG for this image would be: “Sheep profile, looking at camera”
TITLE TAG for this image would be: “Look on Beth’s face when she tries to understand ALT vs. Title Tags.”
What’s even funnier is that technically neither one of them are “tags,” they are “attributes” of the image tag.
THANKS STEVE!
