I assume this has been asked before, but unfortunately the search function doesn't allow terms with only 3 characters...
So, simple question: How can I set an alt-tag for images?
X3 Photo Gallery Support Forums
Alright!metallissimus wrote:Maybe you could add this information to the help-popup for image title?
Maybe, but I am bit wary of this. Logically and technically, an image "title" should be ideal for a human-readable image "alt" tag. After all, Google's entire modern approach to SEO is that seo attributes should be made for "humans", because this is the entire point in the first place. If they contain keyword-spamming, they are not for humans, and Google doesn't want that. Besides, may I ask if this is specifically to get images into Google's image-search? I wonder how much emphasis is on the alt tag for this purpose in comparison to all other factors.metallissimus wrote:As you know from my other post I am digging a little bit into SEO right now. From what I understand so far, this above mentioned situation isn't ideal. Maybe something to consider for a future release?
Yes, but a page's TITLE and DESCRIPTION are two very different but important attributes. Title is the most important SEO tag, while DESCRIPTION is irrelevant to SEO ... However, description will decide what shows when sharing a link on social media, and will also display in the SERP in Google search (below the title and url). Image ALT on the other hand, does not have much emphasis (relatively speaking), and it's unclear what emphasis it has and for what. The image TITLE is ONLY X3, and is not even a tag, so why not use the content of title to populate the ALT attribute? You are not diversifying anything by having different title and alt tag, and even if you were, how would you know diversifying and making TITLE and ALT different is a good thing for seo?metallissimus wrote:I guess different "title" and "alt" tags are just another possibility to use a wider range of (key)words and diversify the wording a little bit. Like with a site's title and meta description – the former is a very concise description of the site's content whereas the latter is more detailed.
I think perhaps ALT tag has most effect to improve ranking of a PAGE where the image is embedded, if the image(s) on the page relate to the page's surrounding text. In other words, an image with alt tags alone (for instance X3 gallery layouts), does not really mean much. This seems to be the case from reading Google's own article on ALT tag, which also seems to recommend human-readable alt tags:mjau-mjau wrote:Honestly I don't know which ranking benefits the most from well SEOed images.
When Google refers to "caption" and "image titles", these are just generic terms for text that is assigned around the image. There is no CAPTION attribute in HTML, and with "image titles", I don't see any reason to believe they are referring to the "title" attribute, which is meant for ANY html elements (mostly anchor links). The point of the TITLE attribute, is to assign a tooltip for the element (normally links), but this only works on mouse-hover devices anyway. Although seo changes all the time, the title ATTRIBUTE has no effect (or extremely little effect) on SEO.metallissimus wrote:This seems to be wrong. Quoting from the link you posted:Google wrote:Google extracts information about the subject matter of the image from the content of the page, including captions and image titles.
Yep, but then why different? Google doesn't normally rank higher just because there is more text spread across attributes. Might be "keyword dilution". And Google doesn't like keyword-ish texts that are not made for humans. Anyway, thanks for the debate on this ... It's definitely a hot topic.metallissimus wrote:I was rather thinking of different text there.mjau-mjau wrote:The question is, why would it be beneficial to add the same text in title as alt tag?
Probably. I will add it to my list. In the meantime, it's pretty easy to simply populate the alt="..." tag manually.metallissimus wrote:One other thing I just noticed: Image title to alt-tag works perfectly in galleries, but not automatically when adding images to the page content via the editor. The alt-tag is simply left empty and you have to fill it in manually. I don't know if it's technically possible to have that applied automatically, would be very convenient.
This feature has been included in new X3.28.0 release:metallissimus wrote:One other thing I just noticed: Image title to alt-tag works perfectly in galleries, but not automatically when adding images to the page content via the editor. The alt-tag is simply left empty and you have to fill it in manually. I don't know if it's technically possible to have that applied automatically, would be very convenient.