The Importance of Image Titles and ALT attributes in SEO

[espmartin]

I've covered this topic once before, but I wanted to back up my advice
regarding the SEO and accessibility benefits of using long tail keywords
for ALTS and Titles to your image tags.

You see, I get 20+ visitors per week on my German Shepherd Training
site via Google's image search, simply by optimization the ALTS/Titles as
well as Google Webmaster's Tools image search enhancement options.

[smeagain]

It is good practice to use the Alt Attribute appropriately for accessibility purposes DDA compliance etc. The Alt attribute doesn't work in all browsers (eg Firefox) but the Title does so therefore it is good design design practice to use both.

Also as you point out Martin, they both help in getting featured in Google (and Co) Image search results. These visitors can be voluminious and usualyy only a very small percentage will be of any commarecial use. However if you work at Image search optimisation, the numbers can be enough to make that small percentage worthwhile. For example, I have achieved several thousand Image Search visitors per day for one client and this translates to over a thousand pounds in daily sales. Well worth the effort and extra bandwidth.

Remember though that to be really effective, the Alt and Title should be descriptive or relevent to the Image itself and in most cases, incorporate a few words relevent to the context of nearby on page text.

[espmartin]

Beautifully put smeagain! Rep added for your input bro!

[smeagain]

While we are on the subject of fully adorning our Images, some sources of accessibility guidance also reccommends use of the long description attribute "longdesc="wordsandstuff.html"" of which, the W3C say:

This attribute specifies a link to a long description of the image. This description should supplement the short description provided using the alt attribute.

At the moment, my understanding is that the Search Engines will retrieve and index this descriptive text, but do not give the page containing the image any bonus points for comtaining it. However should that long dscription contain any virtually unique "long tailed" search terms, then I would expect the containing page to be featured in SERPs for or containing that long tailed phrase.