Title attribute (SEO)

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In HTML, title is one of the attributes that is available for images (and maybe other objects as well). I used to call them tooltips, but that's the wrong term.

Alt texts are more important

See Alt texts (SEO)#Alt texts vs. titles - Which is more important? for details.

Alt text & Title in action

Put an arbitrary image on your computer desktop, call it tmp.png and create file test.html (also on the desktop) with the following content: 

<html>
<img
   src="tmp.png"
   alt="This is the alt text"
   title="This is the title"
>
</html>

Doubleclick on the file to open it in your browser. Some things you might notice:

  • The alt text doesn't pop up
  • The title does pop up.

'Tooltip'?

The title attribute is usually shown as tooltip when you hoover over it with a mouse or similar device - But they are not 'tooltips', that's only how they appear.

Relevant?

Yoast: 

The title attribute is shown as a tooltip when you hover over the element.
A title attribute is not required. What’s more, most of the time it doesn’t
even make sense to add it. They are only available to people who use a mouse
(or other pointing devices) and the only one case where the title attribute is
required for accessibility is on <iframe> and <frame> tags.

If the information conveyed by the title attribute is relevant, consider making
it available somewhere else, in plain text. And if it’s not relevant, consider
removing the title attribute entirely.

Conclusion: Use alt texts, don't use title.

See also

Sources

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