Home : Web Site Images : Image Alt Tag

Why Use An Image Alt Tag?
Help Search Engines Find Your Webpages

I didn't realize how important using an Image Alt Tag was until I started paying attention to my website stats. I was amazed to see how many people were finding my site through Google Image Search.

Not only is it important to tag images every time you upload one but the exact wording you use is of utmost importance.

Let's start by looking at a diagram of an HTML image tag:

The HTML src image code above is the exact code I used on my Photoshop Drop Shadow page to pull in an image of the Layers Style dialog box in Photoshop.

I was very careful to use the Image Alt Tag "Photoshop Drop Shadow" (in yellow above) as opposed to something like "Image 5" because there is a good chance that anyone searching for Photoshop Drop Shadow will find my image, and therefore, my site.

I recently discovered that some browsers (Firefox for sure) do not display the image description when you hover over an image.

For Google to find your image, you definitely need the image alt tag as shown above, but if you want to be sure that your visitors see the image description when they hover, then you should also use the Title Attribute like this:

One of my most popular pages on my first site is my Bunco Theme Party page. Alot of my visitors to that page find me via a Bunco Dice image that I have on that page. Here is a screenshot of the results page in Google Images showing my Bunco Dice image (middle image) on Page 2!

I recommend that you ALWAYS tag images as part of your HTML image tag code and that you use keyword-rich phrases to describe the image.

Visit Our Other Image Webpages

	How To Position Images Learn all about positioning images so you can get them exactly where you want them on your webpages. Find the exact code for all of your image positioning challenges including wrapping text and objects around images and lining them up in a row or column.
	How To Size Images As you build out your site, you will need web page graphics ranging from tiny 16 pixel by 16 pixel (for favicons, buttons or table images) all the way up to large http graphics that are the entire width of a webpage. Learn how to get your images to the perfect size for the intended spot on your site.
	Creating Image Links If you are going to go to the trouble of placing web site images on your site, you might as well make them into image links whenever possible. Learning how to make image links and using them often will greatly improve site navigation for your visitors and help your monetization efforts.
	Shopping Images Not all website graphic sources are created equal. Read my recommendations on where to find free web site images, on buying images inexpensively and on where to find a great selection of clipart. Also, watch a video tutorial on scanning images.
	Photoshop Drop Shadow Tutorial Look at the web site images in the header above. When I created them, I added a gray shadow, aka a drop shadow, around each image. Learn how to add a professional touch to your webpage graphics by watching a drop shadow tutorial video.