Image Alt tags have all just gone missing but they’re not?

  • Resolved silvercarpet

    (@silvercarpet)


    5 years, 7 months ago

    I ran a free SEO check on my site yesterday and was surprised to see that every image alt tag is missing. This is strange because they’ve been working fine for 3 years in the sites current WordPress theme and I haven’t changed them.

    If you run my site, right click on the photo of me in the car and inspect it you can clearly see the alt=”” tag is present and filled in so why am I being told it’s missing? I’m using sites like sitecheckerpro and other free alt tag checkers you can easily find.

    I have gone into WordPress, clicked the pencil icon on the image and the alt is filled in. It’s also showing in the text code and has been working fine for years so I don’t know what’s going on.

    The only thing that I can think of is that my hosting company Siteground have a plugin called SG optimiser. That crashed my site when it was updated a few days back and they have had reports of the same from others. I can’t see how that would break my alt tags though.

    Without rambling (too late!) I have noticed my site has shot up Google rankings ever since my alt tags have broken which leads me to think they’re not even that important. After running a check on Amazon.com I see they have many broken alt tags.

    Maybe I was being punished on Google for having keywords in my alt tags so that’s why it’s working better with them broken? I don’t know.

    To sum up:

    1) Why are my alt tags “missing” when they’re clearly visible in the code and have been working fine for years?

    2) Are they REALLY important seeing as my site is doing better without them?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter silvercarpet

    (@silvercarpet)

    I should also add that Yoast is showing the alt tags as working and the AMP version of my site (with /amp added on the end) comes back as no alt tags missing even though it’s the same code as the full version ??

    Hey silvercarpet,

    As suggested, I checked on Free Alt Tag checker and found all proper.

    Only there is one image that has missing Alt tag.

    Below is a result.

    Result for https://www.1stdrive.com
    You have images on your page that are missing ALT attributes.

    We found 5 images on your page and 1 of them are missing the attribute.

    URL: https://sitechecker.pro/seo-report/https://www.1stdrive.com/

    The image that does not have Alt tag is Lucys-driving-lesson-1024×576.jpg

    Hope this helps.

    Thanks.

    Thread Starter silvercarpet

    (@silvercarpet)

    That image does have an alt tag though, it’s been there for years and you can still see it now in the code.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.ads-software.com Admin

    No, it doesn’t.

    <img class="wp-image-1805" title="Driving lesson in Birmingham with 1stDrive" src="https://www.1stdrive.com/bh/wp-content/uploads/Lucys-driving-lesson-1024x576.jpg"/>

    Clearly visible in the source. No alt.

    Thread Starter silvercarpet

    (@silvercarpet)

    The issue was indeed the SG plugin I mentioned. I turned off lazy load and my alt tags are all now fine.

    Thread Starter silvercarpet

    (@silvercarpet)

    Thanks Samuel, that’s what I saw. I did have Alt tags in my image but they were after the lazy load version of the image was being loaded which didn’t have alt tags.

    Thread Starter silvercarpet

    (@silvercarpet)

    It’s all working fine now, it’s totally a problem at their end.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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