Image Alt tags and/or Captions?

[coykiesaol]

We have a number of Websites and heard that placing a small caption of text below/above the image with relative Keywords in the text if it makes sense or simply add text that describes the image will help with SEO because you can be a little more descriptive with a caption than you can with the ALT tag. So can or should we do both a caption and an Image ALT tag?
Thanks for your help !

[orvn]

Simply using the alt element within the img tag is sufficient. I like to describe the image and only include my keyword if it's convenient. These serve are potential results on image searches.

You may stuff keywords, but only a tiny bit. Personally, I don't

[seoiwc2010]

yes its better if you use both caption and image Alt tag. this gives the search engines a better option to crawl the targeted keywords.

[yukon]

If you have both an image ALT & TITLE tag, you can control what people see & what search engines read.

Example, Google will show your image in Google Image Search for the keyword "Really Fast Cars", when a person hovers over the image they will see "This is a picture of a red car".

<img src="http://domain.com/images/really-fast-cars.jpg" alt="Really Fast Cars" title="This is a picture of a red car"/>

[theentry]

Originally Posted by yukon

If you have both an image ALT & TITLE tag, you can control what people see & what search engines read.

Example, Google will show your image in Google Image Search for the keyword "Really Fast Cars", when a person hovers over the image they will see "This is a picture of a red car".

<img src="http://domain.com/images/really-fast-cars.jpg" alt="Really Fast Cars" title="This is a picture of a red car"/>

Hm he wasn't talking about that, he was talking about a caption which is seen all the time above or under the image.

Actually I think it's a nice idea to boost more relevance to the image and I've never thought of it!

[linkswap]

It's a good technique to use Alt tag with most of the images and placing good keyword, relevant to the site in it cz it obviously is good as far the SEO and ranking is concerned for a site.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by theentry

Hm he wasn't talking about that, he was talking about a caption which is seen all the time above or under the image.

Actually I think it's a nice idea to boost more relevance to the image and I've never thought of it!

Ok, I read OP again.

In that case I would simply place my existing Tags (keywords) someplace around the image.

BTW, OP you can be as descriptive as you want with an ALT tag.

[superSEO2011]

Originally Posted by yukon

If you have both an image ALT & TITLE tag, you can control what people see & what search engines read.

Example, Google will show your image in Google Image Search for the keyword "Really Fast Cars", when a person hovers over the image they will see "This is a picture of a red car".

<img src="http://domain.com/images/really-fast-cars.jpg" alt="Really Fast Cars" title="This is a picture of a red car"/>

Thanks for explaining this!

[Alexander CPA]

I'd just stick with the alt tag to be honest.

[Albern]

Yes. it's good. you can use both image tag and caption.

[chocofries]

I normally just put the targeted keywords to the alt tag of the images but not on the captions. I use the captions to describe the images if needed.

[keyideas]

Simply use of ALT tag is sufficient for search engine because major search engine only considering ALT tags.

[rosesmark]

Internet Explorer we can see this ALT text, simply by mousing over the image and looking at the yellow tooltip that appears. Other browsers (correctly) don't do this. The HTML for inserting ALT text is:

<img src="filename.gif" alt="Alternative description goes here">


Spacer images should always be assigned null ALT text, or alt="".



This way most screen readers will completely ignore the image and won't even announce its presence.

[webmedia]

Yes you can use both. If an image is well optimized then it may be possible that image can also rank.