Google: Translate Your Image Alt Tags As Well

Jan 25, 2018 - 7:26 am 4 — by

Google International Languages

Google's John Mueller said that having different languages on the same page "makes it harder to determine which language is the primary language of a page." You don't want to make it harder for Google to understand your pages, ever. So make sure to translate your page fully when doing that translation.

That includes the image alternative text attributes, alt tags. John Mueller said if you don't translate those as well, it can make it harder for Google to understand them as well.

Here are the tweets:

There has been some conflicting advice from John on this in the past. In 2010, John said make sure the language on the page is not mixed, that you use one language on a single page. Then in 2013 he said if you do mix languages on the page it is fine and he brought it up again in 2014.

Your best bet - try to give Google clear signals about your page and that includes the language.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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