Using Title Tags
Are you using title tags on your images?
If not, you should be.
Title tags are important for a number of reasons:
- Think of title tags as the image equivalent of a link’s "anchor text". When the image is linked, it tells the search engines the same thing link would. This is compared to using the "alt" tags, which just describes the image.
- It’s content. The search engines read the title tags, which can help you rank for those terms.
I’ll show you what I mean:
Recently we added 3 images to our home page on MyWeddingFavors.com with the following title tags:
"Chat with Other Brides on our Blog!"
"View Some of Our Best Selling Favors & Gifts"
"Wedding Tips & More from MyWeddingFavors.TV"
Here’s what happened in less than a week:
————————————————————————————–
Keyword Phrase: "chat with other brides"
————————————————————————————–
Keyword Phrase: "wedding tips & more"
————————————————————————————–
Keyword Phrase: "best selling favors"
————————————————————————————–
Keyword Phrase: "best selling wedding favors"
————————————————————————————–
Keep in mind, MyWeddingFavors.com gets spidered very frequently, and we were already ranking for "best selling wedding favors", however we didn’t have 2 pages listed for that phrase. The other phrases we did not show up for.
Also, these aren’t highly competitive terms - but the point is Google obviously is recognizing the title tags of our images and it boosted our rankings for the terms included in the title tags.
The more pages Google is ranking, the better - whether it’s for a competitive term or not. It can only help us overall.
Here’s an example of what the code looks like with title tags added:
<img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/imagename.jpg" alt="keyword phrase" title="keyword phrase">
Also, when you have title tags on your images and place your mouse cursor over an image, it will display what the image is about in both IE and Firefox. Only adding "Alt" text to your images will give you the same effect in IE, however Alt text is not shown in Firefox.
One last thing about title tags: add them to your links as well. Most people don’t do this. Text to speech readers read the title attributes out loud, so blind people can still know what the page being linked to is about. This also helps you conform to the latest W3 standards, which is ideal from the search engines point of view. Although this may not make a huge change in your rankings, the search engines will notice if you’re doing all of the little things, and you may get a slight boost because of it. Every little bit helps!
Here’s what a title tag looks like in a link:
<a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com” title=”keyword phrase”>Link Text </a>
So be sure to use title tags. It’s extremely simple to add, it can’t hurt you, and you may start ranking for more keyword phrases just by making this small change.
Posted by 
thanks. great idea. will need to update our site now!! Keep the tips coming !!
Unique Wedding Invitations - Erickson Design
So, I hope title tags work in this blog then: Child Custody. That’s really cool that your site is so powerful you’re getting ranked for your title attributes. I’ll definitely make sure to include extra text in the titles of my links and images!
Nope - oh well. I included the title attribute on my link above and it parsed it out and removed it :(. Oh well - I imagine the same thing happened to Bill above…
Hi Brad. In “Stomping The Search Engines”, I can remember you guys saying not to bother with alt text because they didn’t make much of a difference. Maybe with a big site like Wedding Favors it might matter, but the everyday little-guy site?
Not a bad idea, I do it because Dream Weaver promts me so why not…I’m not so sure it’s a big factor though.
Hey thats really cool. I cant wait for google to update to see if I moved up!
Thanks
Car Rims Palace | Car Rims and Tire Package
Thanks Brad!
Another great tip!
vintage t shirts
Henry
I definitely will start adding those title tags from now on.
Thanks Brad!
Get a vintage coke machine.
Thanks Brad for the great tip!
Dental Resources
Another great tip! Thank you!
photo birth announcements
Wow.. Very interesting. Though I wonder if it really only matters on large / high PR sites? I have tried it anyway, and will post the results to everyone here asap. We get spidered about once a day, so will let you know if it helped.
Very interesting indeed Brad. Thanks. Must get to work on it
Air Purifier
I’m adding the tags now!
Thanks for the tip.
Once again, I will never be able to express how blessed I have been to learn from you Brad. Our business lives have changed forever from what we learn from you as we apply it.
I totally didn’t know you could do this, Brad you are always full of such enlightening knowledge.
Free Home Business Journal
I just did some of the title tags and added to some links, in IE when you mouse over them, now they have “alt” text when you mouseover, which is sort of cool. I didn’t know you could do that.
Hey Brad!
This is why I love this Blog and another testament to the fact “Stomping the Search Engines” was a great purchase! Without it I would have never even know about your blog!
Thanks again for everything!
Java Teak Outdoor Furniture
Brad
I make it a point to read your blog first thing every day. After going through your STSE program it has paid for itself 100x over. I just cant thank you enough.
Thanks
Charles Kirkland
Like mentioned above, in the Stomping the Search engines course, you and Andy said that the title tags weren’t so important. But I guess it’s worth a shot if it bringing in traffic for your site. My question is, were you always using title tags or just expermenting recently?
I just added page-specific key phrases as title tags to each category page, as well as the home page…
Does anyone here know of a way to quickly find out what page on Google or Yahoo! one’s site is sitting on at any given moment…without physically looking through 17 pages of a key phrase organic search?
Health Foods, Vitamin C
Health Foods, Vitamin C, Herbs and Supplements. The Health Ranch is Your Place for Life. The way you want to live.
Hi Brad,
This is some very helpful and practical information that I really found useful… I appreciate you sharing it with us. This may seem trivial, but I agree that the more targeted our links are, the more our search rankings will be helped.
Teething
Useful tip. Thanks for sharing it!
E85 Blog
Cool info Brad, thanks. I noticed WordPress promting for title tags, but was never sure what they were used for. Now I know and will start updating!
Also, I think I’d use Alt Tags, even if the SEs didn’t use them, since it’s a courtesy to those few people who look at them (like me.) What, youi don’t hover over images to see the comments?
Thanks for the great tip!
Good advice, as very little bit helps. Improving those smaller keywords simply means more relevant traffic, which is what we all want.
Acne Products
Thanks for the tip! I often wondered about this — thanks again!
Original Picnic Baskets
I have used this trick for some time with good success on some of my sites with lots of pix. My current projects don’t have a lot of pictures, so it isn’t a great help. But every little bit counts. You definitely want to take the small amount of time it takes to make this optimization.
Tom
Brad,
I think this has definitely made a huge difference for us since we used this information to tweak a few pages. Search engine results dramatically improved.
Atlanta DJ
This information is very helpful…
Thanks for taking the time to break it down so that we can understand it. I think that if we apply these principles we will be able to beat alot of the others who may not be tweaking their image and anchor text.
Thanks again
Teething
Wonderful info Brad!
I was kind of already thinking along these lines, but your experiments confirm it.
Thanks for passing on this info!
Dave
http://www.bird-supplies.net/
Cool tip - Thanks Brad. I aslo noticed that Yahoo and MSN really like key words placed as a table summary… of cource the keywords should reflect what the table is about
Here is an example…
My Favorite Cities
Paris, France
London, England
Rome, Italy
Oops… my Table Summary code was stripped out of the above comment… gonna’post a link to an example…
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/summary.asp
Great advice, thanks.
Rose Gardening
I just wanted to report that I think this really works as I have finally gotten my link to show up on the first page of google for the very first time ever since I started the site after applying this information to my site.
Atlanta Chocolate Fountain Rental
Thanks for the info Brad!
Glamour Lingerie Bras
Brad:
It’s because of initiatives like this that myweddingfavors.com receive a mention in DMNews for April 24, 2006 around Ad Tech (page 66). Congrats!
Erik
American Novel
Great Tip Brad…now I will be next 5 days changing all my sites
Great Tip Brad!
Although now I will be spending the next week makeing changes to all my sites.
Chris
Excellent,
This should help a lot especially for my really niche pages that are still first page.
Used Cisco
Excellent,
This should help a lot especially for my really niche pages that are still first page.
Used Cisco
Garrison Allen,
Here’s a handy online tool you can use to check search engine ranking.
Very nice tip and explanation Brad!
I’ve never heard of using “title” tags in images and text links before now. I’m definately going to give it a try and see if I get a little boost in the SERPS.
Scrubs
Great…I just got the alt text updated on all my images so now I get to go back and add the title tags. Do you think it is a problem if the alt text and title text are the same? Great resource - I’m looking forward to learning more.
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Beach Tent
Brad,
is it possible to have TOO MANY alt tags or to overload a page with the same keywords?
Direction
For Our Times
Thanks for the Stomper bonus.
Question for any advanced Stomper students:
Why is my articles page showing a PR 5, but my site’s home page is a PR 4?
I have no links pointing to the articles page, though I have submitted to directories many articles on the articles page with my home page, however.
I’ll take it, though I’m confused.
Thank you,
Mike
Florida Rent to Own Home | Sell Home Fast Florida
We’re hoping this will help. Thanks for the blog tips.
Chocolate Fountain
Still busy working on my important web sites, applying what you taught here and I have to say it is amazing how one thing I didn’t know before has really made the biggest difference in results. Thank you Brad.
M2C Global
We did implement this, and went from position 2 for our main keyword to position 6 on yahoo. Google was position 20 and now 12 - so we’ll see what happens
Xbox Mod Chip
I thought the alt attributes served the same purpose. Isn’t alt attribute + image title attribute redundant?
Support charity sites in the Webmaster Talk SEO Contest: retsambew dash klat for charity
Thanks for the post! Keep the information coming!
Get unique fireplace screens
Brad, this is an outstanding observation for improving your website pages and search engine rankings. Now, if anyone is interested in improving your health through weight loss and diet, visit:
http://www.weightlossanddietresource.com
Wow, this is really cool. Way back when, I saw a number of SEO guys using titles in table tags - I thought it might be considered spam., but I just didn’t know that you could use them in images and in links. Another great insight, Brad! Incidentally, do you know anything about the proper usage of those tags in tables?
I just launched an online biz for my wife so I need every solid SEO strategy in the book so show my wife that I know what I am talking about! Thanks again.
Eric
Cuba T-Shirts
Hi,
We’re going to add them right now. We had no idea image title tags were so important! We have followed everything Brad has said and couldn’t be more thankful. Two of our sites are on the 1st page for every one of our search terms,we are #1 for many!
Thanks,
Wholesale Dog Clothes and Pet Supplies
Thanks again Brad,
Great info, I’m going to work on it straight away.
Chocolate“>http://www.mychocolatedot.com“>Chocolate
Great idea Brad. Never thought about doing that. I’ll get right to it!
This is a great post. Although I am a bit late to the party here, I wanted to add that the TITLE tag can be used for other elements including Forms, Form Attributes, links, tables, individual table rows, and other structural HTML elements and Block Quotes. It is apparently extremely versitle.
Thanks for the post
Eric Pryor
Stop Foreclosure
I just experimented with this new technique last week and now my site has jumped to the number three spot for one of our keywords… Good stuff!
Teething Articles
If I’m struggling to get Google to index my entire site after many months, will a site map make it easier?
Google, in particular, spidered and indexed other sites I have much more quickly.
Mike
Florida Rent to Own Home | Sell Home Fast Florida
Thanks for the post. We’ll have to make sure to put our title
tags in for our table lamps site from here on out.
Thanks for the tip. Hope it helps.
Title tags are great I can wait to make more money from them.
ITHarwareBlog.com
Brad,
Great tip on the title tags! I just started using that on all our various websites and webpages, even google adsesnse and affiliate income related pages. As you pointed out, every little bit can help. Plus, it can’t hurt!
This is good advice Brad for everyone. But I’m more concerned about the fact that myweddingfavors.com is no longer in the serps for the three “title” terms. It appears that the May 16th or so change in Google indexing has hit everyone with excessive reciprocal links. Do you have any additional thoughts?
Private Label Rights Integrator Studio
Tony, If you’re referring specifically to the terms used in this blog post, the reason it doesn’t show up is because we removed those images from the site shortly after Brad posted it.
Jon, I’m referring to his title terms (”bread and butter”): Wedding Favors, Unique Wedding Favors, and Wedding Party Favors. I did a ranking manager check on the site and it didn’t show up in the first 500 for any of the three terms.
I always use them in everything I do. It only takes a second. I don’t understand why more people don’t do this! One more thing to one up your competing sites…
Craig - Twain Harte Vacation Rental
Hi Brad
Thank you for this info. I also remember that you said in The Stomper that image tags don’t matter that much as far as SEO is concerned.
I also remember that you said we should keep on testing and that things won’t stay the same over time.
Garden-Plants
Thanks, Brad. i was onto the picture title tags, but the links idea was an added bonus.
Great tip. But I have a quick question is is possible to go over board with this and hit an over optimization penalty?
Arthritis Treatment
Alan,
It won’t hurt you to have title tags on all of your images IF they describe what the image is about.
If you just stuff your main keyword phrases into all of your alt/title tags, yes, you could get hit with a penalty for that.
I usually use title tags, but don’t know how to track it all. plus, is there a penalty for long titles?
As usual you give excellent advice. I remember from Stomping about title tags, but forgot. Thanks for reinforcing it.
Sharon Deloy
Thanks again for top information. I can’t tell you what a positive difference stomping the search engines has made in my popularity. It is greatly appreciated.
Takara
http://www.dancing-dolphin-essences.com
Hi Brad,
Great site thanks for all the tips. http://www.OmahaMortgageGuy.com
GREAT stuff I did some testing and can confirm it does help with a better ranking.
Australian Web Hosting
I wouldn’t have thought title tags would appear in search engines. On a ranking, would it be more important to relabel my title tags first on my images or concentrate on keyword density?
Herbalife
It may be too late as it seems that the last post was quite some time ago - but I’m new to this game having just purchased both “Stomping the Search Engines” and Brad’s referral “Yahoo Store Builder”. Can anyone refer me to the location in the store editor where I can add title tags, or is it not possible?
Thanks for the helpful hints, Brad. As always, you help us webmasters to stay at the top of our game. We will try these techniques on http://www.mygourmetcookingshop.com.
Very useful tips. Thanks Brad!
The same goes for the titles in posts… include those title tags wherever you can, it has been proven to make a difference, so …
Great tip Brad, thnx.
Saso from Extra Income Tip.com
Excellent Tip! I’m updating my sites asap. Thanks for keeping us in the know!
Thanks for the tip! I’ll be sure to add title tags to this
real estate
investment property website.
a better idea is to use the longdesc attribute. title, alt and longdesc attributes are created for accessibility, and should be used when appropriate.
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200412/the_alt_and_title_attributes/
http://www.netpaths.net
Interesting. I especially like the sushi milkshakes. Comparing auto-gen robot content vs. an actual “hand written” one?
Craig
Fencing Equipment at Fencing.Net
alt=”keyword phrase” title=”keyword phrase”
Do you think title can repeate alt?
Describing images is a very interesting subject.
More info at:
How to Increase Your Image Visibility