Should You Use Alt or Title Attribute to Describe Images

If you’re even slightly familiar with HTML language, you know about the image tag <IMG> that is used to display pictures in web pages. This tag supports two similar attributes – TITLE and ALT – that are both supposed to describe the image in words.

These attributes are important as they impact image search rankings but  confusing too because we often don’t know whether to use TITLE or ALT or both attributes when describing images.

ALT or TITLE for Images

Luckily, the rule is pretty simple - always add the ALT attribute to your images but include the TITLE attribute only if the image is a link. I have tried to illustrate this with an image of a McDonald’s Burger.

Case A: The burger image is not linking anywhere so we just use the ALT attribute describing the image.

Case B: The burger image links to the nutrition section on the McDonald’s website so we also include a TITLE attribute that gives the visitor an idea about the linked page. Note that ALT attribute continues to describe the image as in Case A.

This point is made in the Google SEO Guide [PDF] as well though with a slight error. It says “if you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you’re linking to.” I think that “alt text” should be read as “title text” according to John Mueller’s advice.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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