What Is The Difference Between Alt Tag And Alt Text?
Image SEO is an important part of your optimization strategy. Correcting filling alt tag and title text is recommended by every SEO.
There are many terms related to optimizing images. Some of them are title text, alt text, image tag, alt tag, and so on.
But is there any difference between alt tag and alt text? Or are these the same?
We will find this and more in this post.
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The alt tag is an attribute of the IMG tag which let us add alternative text to the image. And alt text is the actual text which we add in the alt attribute. This text is helpful for accessibility purposes.
What is an Alt Tag?
The alt tag is an attribute of the <img> tag where you can write alt text. The alt tag can be null or empty but it is a best practice to fill out the alt attribute as it helps improve your ranking in Google Images.
Here’s how the alt tag looks like in HTML:
Suppose you have an image named “rabbit.png” on your computer and you want it to showcase in your new blogs about types of rabbits. So you uploaded the image to your blog. Now the HTML coding of this image will be:
<img src=”rabbit.png”>
But you want to add alt text to this image. The text you decided to write is:
“A White rabbit running in a park”
So here’s what the HTML code will look like:
<img src= “rabbit.png” alt= “A White rabbit running in a park”>
I hope this makes you clear.
According to Wikipedia, “The alt attribute is the HTML attribute used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text (alt text) that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered. The alt attribute is used by “screen reader” software so that a person who is listening to the content of a webpage (for instance, a person who is blind) can interact with this element.”
Matt Cutts perfectly describes the importance of alt tags in this video. I highly suggest you watch this explanation here:
And here’s what John Mueller thinks about this:
So how does this alt tag helps in SEO?
Well, Google uses the text in the alt tag to better understand the image and the page. And that helps you rank in SERP also.
Here’s what Google says, “Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image. Also, alt text in images is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link.”
Note: The alt tag is mostly referred to as an alt attribute because it is an attribute of the <img> Tag. Here, the IMG is a tag, whereas, alt is an attribute that is used to specify the alt text of the image.
What is Alt Text?
Stands for Alternative text, this is a piece of text that is written under the alt attribute and is known as alt text. The purpose of this is to define what’s in the image and it helps search engines as well as people who use screen readers.
Whenever somebody is using accessibility tools like screen readers or they can’t load the images properly (due to a slow internet connection), their browser can show them the alt text, which can help them to understand what’s in the image.
There are some best practices for writing a proper alt text. W3C has given guidelines on how to write alt text for different types of images.
The most common practice is to avoid keyword stuffing. The text should accurately describe what is in the image.
And don’t write generic alt text like “image 1”, and avoid writing the word ‘image’ when writing alt text. For example “an image of a dog”. So avoid writing “an image” and just write “a dog” or anything descriptive.
The alt text is not just limited to Google, you can add alt text in all major social media like Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
What is the Difference Between Both?
The major difference between an alt tag and an alt text is that the alt tag is an attribute where one can write alt text, but alt text is the actual text which is written under the alt attribute.
That got pretty complex, but don’t worry, let’s break this down with HTML code:
<img src= “peacock.jpg” alt= “a peacock dancing in a park”>
Here, the ‘alt’ tag is an attribute of the image tag, and the text “a peacock dancing in a park” is the alt text.
Final Thoughts
The alt attribute and alt tag are family members of the image tag.
Do you write alt tags in your images? I would love to know your thoughts on our server!
Also, you can email me or read my daily posts on LinkedIn.
P.S. When the topic is images, why don’t you read what is serving images in next-gen format?
