Image: <name> vs. <title>

I create my websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Recently I noticed that the software is creating <name> tags for images.
What is the difference between <name> and <title> from SEO point of view ? Should I use only one, or should I try it with both of them.
There is always the <alt> tag as well. Does this have influence ?

Xaver

Hi,
I think the title is the most importent word on your site it should be also your anchor text ,
You can repeat the keyword just make sure it is in the right desity
GOTO http://www.ranks.lk there go to the desnity tool
ENJOY.

LiGhTen
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I think you're talking about attributes (to the IMG tag) here.

In a nutshell:

NAME is more or less equivalent to ID. It is not very useful for SEO purposes, unless you use (internal) backlinks like www.example.com/mypage.htm#keyword1 and have keyword1 appear as a NAME or ID of one of your (image) tags. The effect of this method is thought to be minimal, but could just give you an edge...

TITLE is more or less equivalent to ALT. Alt is used as a text to describe pictures that are not shown for whatever reason. Title gives visitors a popup hint* when they hover over an image (or any other tag for that matter). For SEO: alt is said to have an effect (for instance when you put an IMG inside a link, and have keywords in your ALT attribute). I feel the TITLE attribute will soon have the same status as ALT, if it hasn't already.

What it boils down to is this: NAME is not an alternative to ALT/TITLE. If Dreamweaver doesn't support the latter attributes, you should get an update or make manual adaptions.


* some browers do the same with the alt-text, but most only popup the title-text if you use both...

I have to disagree slightly.

The name attribute and title attribute have no effect to SEO. The title attribute may work in some SE's but not in Google.
The ALT attribute on the other hand is very important and is a W3C recomendation. Your code is not standards compliant unless it uses an ALT attribute for images.

Title attributes to other elemens can give usability bennefits but beware if different browsers interpetation of them.

the ALT attribute from a purely SEO point of view should match the title tag but from an accessability point of view it should describe the image.

Have to comment on that again... I believe Usability comes first, so before SEO and W3C. So unless browsers stop coughing up popup hints with the ALT text, I won't put ALTs in every IMG tag. It can be very annoying, especially on menus, icons and spacers. An alternative would be to have a valid ALT attribute and also an empty TITLE attribute, so there would be no hint, but I'm not sure if that really works on all browsers...

BTW - I would like to see some ALT/TITLE optimisation tests. Has anybody experimented (with results)?

I was under the impression that NAME was used for database/ColdFusion dynamic pages. You can call an image by it's name and pass values through it just like you can with image in forms.

ALT tags have no weight in the SERPs but help an image rank better in Google's Image Search.

TITLE tags are what ALT tags are for images but used primarily on text links and just like ALT tags, TITLE tags have no value when it comes to SEO.

You might get a slight bump in the SERPs though for following W3C standards so it doesnt hurt to use them. At least your site will be compatiable for impaired users, browsers that dont support images and so on.

That's at least my interpretation of those tags ;)