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🔍 OTTO SEO: Meta Keywords and Alt Text Visibility

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Camilo Aponte

Camilo Aponte

Last updated on Sep 30, 2026

🧭 Overview

When OTTO SEO deploys on-page optimizations to your website, two common questions arise: Where do meta keywords appear? and Where does image alt text appear? These are two distinct SEO elements that behave very differently after deployment. This article explains exactly what each element does, who can see it, and where to verify it.

📋 Meta Keywords: Source Code Only

Meta keywords are placed inside the section of your page's HTML as a tag. They are not visible to website visitors on the page itself. No text, label, or indicator appears anywhere on the front-end of your site.

Meta keywords are only accessible in two places:

  • Your page's source code — right-click any page and select View Page Source to find the tag inside the section.
  • Browser developer tools — open DevTools (F12), go to the Elements tab, and inspect the block.

This is standard browser behaviour and is not specific to OTTO SEO. Meta keywords have no visual presence on a webpage by design — they exist purely as metadata read by crawlers and tools, not by human visitors.

🖼️ Image Alt Text: Visible in Source Code and to Assistive Technology

Image alt text behaves very differently from meta keywords. After OTTO SEO deploys alt text to your images, it becomes part of the rendered HTML of your page — meaning it is accessible to website visitors and external tools, not hidden inside a software layer.

Specifically, deployed image alt text:

  • Appears in your page's source code — right-click the page, select View Page Source, and search for the alt="" attribute on your tags.
  • Is read aloud by screen readers — visitors using assistive technology will hear the alt text description when they navigate to that image.
  • Displays as fallback text — if an image fails to load in a visitor's browser, the alt text appears in place of the broken image.
  • Is indexed by search engines — Googlebot and other crawlers read alt text directly from your page's HTML to understand image content.

Alt text does not appear as a visible caption or label on the page for sighted visitors under normal circumstances — but it is fully present in the live HTML that anyone can inspect.

⚖️ Side-by-Side Comparison

  • Meta Keywords — Location: section of HTML | Visible to site visitors: No | In page source code: Yes | Read by screen readers: No | Indexed by Google: No (largely ignored by modern search engines)
  • Image Alt Text — Location: tag within page body | Visible to site visitors: No (unless image fails to load) | In page source code: Yes | Read by screen readers: Yes | Indexed by Google: Yes

✅ How to Verify Deployments in OTTO SEO

  1. In the left sidebar, navigate to OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) (URL: /seo-automation-v3).
  2. Locate the page you optimized.
  3. In your browser, open a new tab and go to the live URL of that page.
  4. Right-click anywhere on the page and select View Page Source.
  5. To check meta keywords: press Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) and search for meta name="keywords". You will find it inside the block.
  6. To check image alt text: search for alt= in the source code. Each deployed alt text value will appear inside the corresponding tag.

If you do not see your changes reflected in the page source within a few minutes of deployment, try a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R or Cmd+Shift+R) to bypass any cached version of the page.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

  • Will visitors see my meta keywords on the page? No. Meta keywords are hidden metadata. No visitor — regardless of device or browser — will see them displayed on the page.
  • Does OTTO SEO only change how things look on the front end? No. Image alt text is written directly into your page's HTML source, making it a real structural change — not just a visual overlay. It will appear in your source code and be readable by search engines and assistive technology.
  • Why can't I see the alt text with my eyes on the page? Alt text is not a visible caption. It lives inside the HTML tag itself. You can confirm it is there by viewing the page source or using browser DevTools to inspect the image element.

💬 Need More Help?

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.