Are Meta Tags More Important Than Alt Tags?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

When it comes to detailed search engine optimization, which is more important – meta tags or alt tags?

Before answering that question, let’s examine what each is supposed to do. Your meta tags define important elements of your page. The title tag appears in the top left corner of your site visitor’s web browser and is also the top line in the search engine listing. Your description tag is used by search engines to give a summary of your page in the SERP and appears right below the clickable title. The keyword tag simply defines specific keywords that appear on your page so that search engines can narrow down the scope of the page in their listings, but not all search engines put equal weight on the keyword tag because it has been misused by spammers and uneducated SEOs in the past.

The alt tag is a single tag that is used for your photos. Without the alt tag, search engines have no way to know what your photos are about because they can’t scan photos. This is true of any image. Alt tags define what they are for the search engines.

So which is more important?

I think that depends on whether you are using images are not (and you should). If so, then the importance is really equal. It might actually even be tilted slightly toward your title and description tags, although the keyword being included in the meta tag category tilts the importance back down for the meta tags. It is the least important of the three.

I highly recommend that you include all your meta tags on every page of your website and alt tags for every image. You’ll have a better chance of ranking for the keywords you want to rank for.