Alt Tags for multiple images of a single product - opinion and suggest

[Saimon86]

Hi all,

i've read a lot here (many thnaks!) about Alt Tags for multiple images of the same product.
Here i would like to have your expert opinion about how i would like to run this before to modify thousand of alt tags.
My product <h1> on the page is e.g "Google beach house" . What you will phisically buy is the DWG file for Autocad of the Google beach house. In this page i've got 3 images of the product which are the previews of the DWG file.
First image is showing the overall project, Second image is showing in detail the Front and Right Side Elevations and the Third image is showing in detail the Ground and First Floor Plan. So i would go for:
1st <ALT> : "Google beach house, Complete Project - DWG Previews"
2nd <ALT> : "Google beach house, Front and Right Side Elevation - DWG Previews
3rd <ALT> : "Google beach house, Ground and First Floor Plan - DWG Previews
What's your thoughts or suggestions?
Last question. What about <Title>? i was thinking to go for all of them with 1st "Google beach house", 2nd "Front and Right Side Elevation", 3rd "Ground and First Floor Plan"
For my understanding <Title> is not that relevant for SEO purposes but is good for user experince that when users hovering the image.

What do you think? does the <ALT> titles might be more descriptive?

Thanks in advance

[phranque]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], Saimon86!

Try viewing your page with a text only browser such as lynx. You'll know what looks right in that context.

btw it's alt "attribute", not "tag".

[lucy24]

For my understanding <Title> is not that relevant for SEO purposes but is good for user experince that when users hovering the image.

This threw me for a moment, because <title> is an html element that applies to the whole page; here you meant the wholly unrelated "title" attribute.

Think of (blackest heresy!) humans first. The "alt" attribute is shown when the browser isn't able to display the image--either because the image file has gone missing, or because a visually impaired user has customized their browser settings. Or, as phranque said, if they're using a text-only browser such as Lynx. The "title" attribute on the other hand is shown when the user mouses-over the element--any element, not just images. Personally I only use "title" when the image contains text, whether that's the title page of a book, or a picture that includes a bit of writing (for some reason I seem to get a lot of inn signs).

[Saimon86]

Hi both,

thanks for your replies. Yes sure as you have already catched up i meant Alt and Title Attribute for images. As well i'll try to view my page trough lynx as suggested.
About the "alt" attribute, yes of course i'll think it for humans first. My issue here is to understand if i will get penalized having a lot of sligthyly different images wich have slightly differents "alt" attribute and in the other hand investigate if there is an efficent way to improve them for SEO (finding a right formula for my products)
About the "Title" attribute i'll speack with my web developer to create a module by wich they can be created automaticly (i've got thousands of images) in order to do different tests and check if "title" would improve somehow the ranking.

thanks a lot
s

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Be careful, too mush "optimizations" can lead to a downgrading of your ranking. Having your targeted keywords all over the page, repeated over and over gain, can drags you to a gray area.

For example instead of :

"Google beach house, Front and Right Side Elevation - DWG Previews "

I would simply put

"Front and Right Side Elevation"

The page is already about "Google beach house", so for the image related to the main theme , I don't think this is useful to repeat it again. And from the description, we know it's a matter of DWG stuff.

If the same image is displayed at an other page, then yes, the whole ALT might be of use (on this other page)

[RedBar]

I posted this in 2009 under a previous moniker at # 3963173, it is still apllicavle today:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Saimon86]

Hi JorgeV

that' sounds a good tip. I'm aware about the risk of keywords stuffing, but honestly this is the first time i do optimization for images and i thoughts it wasn't that dangerous...so thanks for this.
About the images what i have is not an image repeated in two or more pages but i have in one page slightly differents images (from alt attribute point of view). They are different views of the same object (e.g sections, elevations and plans of the beach house). So following your suggestion they will be (for my first example):
"Complete Project"
"Front and Right Side Elevation"
"Ground and First Floor Plan"
Here i've got another issue. Having lots of projects of different houses i will have thousands images with same name even they are in different pages. (because all the projects will have sections, elevations and plans)
Does it could be again even worth?

[tangor]

Page and title should speak for that content.

Project xyz and aspects
Project 123 and aspects

Drop the stuffing at the end of your examples and all should work great.

[Saimon86]

Hi tangor

it sounds a very good compromise. thanks a lot for this!

last thing about "title" attribute of images. I've got some of them which represent only categories (e.g an image of a beatuful generic house in the beach representing the category "hosues by the beach"). The Image is actually an hyperlink to the list of products (houses) listed into itself category. I would go for a title attribute as a tooltip, "discover all the houses ". I understand that repeting " by the beach" (so "discover all the hosues by the beach ") it's a bit of stuffing. As well in this case i would avoid to assign any "tag" attribute as the image itself is not essential, the page wher it will be listed will be a list categories ("hosues by the beach", "hosues by the forest" etc) with a generic description of the categories

[tangor]

Your user will know that a house is a house and can be built anywhere. Determine what it is you are actually selling! Houses or locations, or houses for specific locations?

When using alt="" I try to keep it as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE for an accurate short descriptive of the THE ACTUAL IMAGE. Keeps the code clean and neat. Accessibility is improved as the page title (in header) is the PURPOSE DESCRIPTIVE of the page and the H1 (there should be only ONE!) is the Specific title of the page/content on display.