Every part of SEO you skip doing correctly is a chance for your competitors to go ahead of you and make better results on Google searches. Better results, more leads, more clients, more income. You don’t want this to happen and that’s why you shouldn’t neglect image alt text. This article will explain everything you need to know about why image alt text is so important for SEO.
The definition of alt text in images
If this is still not clear to everyone, we are giving you a simple explanation.
Alt stands for alternative and it is also known as “alt descriptions” or “alt attributes.”It is a brief HTML attribute that you may use to provide the images on your website with a description of no more than 100 characters.
Why are you doing this if the text is not always visible to the site visitors?
Images with alt text make it easier for screen readers and search engine crawlers to comprehend how your images look and work. Images’ alt text serves as a source of additional information for readers who are blind or visually impaired. Additionally, the alt text is shown in the place of the image if it is unable to load. This means better web accessibility.
Let’s give some examples of alt text:
- <img src=”dog.png” alt=”image of dog”>
- <img src=”dog” alt=”dog crossing the street”>
- <img src=”dog” alt=”golden retriever helping its blind owner to cross the street”>
If you think that more is less, in this case, you’re wrong. Alt text should be informative, descriptive, and contain relevant information.
The importance of visual content for SEO
Let’s admit it, we humans are visual beings. If we see a nice picture and a bunch of long text, the chances are we are going to look more at a picture. You must use all available traffic sources if you want to rank highly, which implies you must not ignore traffic from picture search results. It is therefore essential to include alt text in your image files and to fully optimize your page for search engines.
Furthermore, include the target term in your alt text if you want your images to appear in particular search results. Make sure the image’s alt text includes both the most important keyword and a detailed description of the image. Both humans and search engines will benefit from this.
However, don’t be over the top with keywords and descriptions because it can be counterproductive and you can be penalized by Google. You should consider this and write your alt text for photos clearly and concisely because most screen readers can only read up to 125 characters at a time.
Images can draw traffic to your website
Turning your images into hyperlinked search results that show up in Google Images or as image packs is one of the most useful things image alt text can accomplish for you. Other than just being decorative, these images can highly contribute to increasing the website’s traffic.
Another technique to get organic traffic is from images that show up in image packs or Google Images. Thousands more visits may come as a result of this. You can upgrade your old blog posts and make them more optimized by adding images and alt text. It’s a good way to freshen up your website.
Improved topical relevance
To determine what a page is about, Google looks at its words. So, if you are writing about daisies and roses, Google will conclude that your website is about gardening. However, the problem comes across when Google sometimes can’t read the context that is “locked away” in photos. While you might think that Google will know it’s about flowers, don’t think that it will necessarily tell apart roses from daisies.
For this reason, it is important to prevent any misunderstandings and any locked content. Don’t forget that some images don’t need alt text, especially if they are irrelevant for keyword ranking.
Improved Google Images rankings
Remember JLo’s image in that green dress? That’s why Google images were created in the first place. This is proof that a good image can make a huge influence. Precisely Google images is a huge search engine and worth the good ranking.
Furthermore, Google.com.au has dozens of millions of visits each month. All this combined gives an enormous potential when it comes to ranking. SEO Sydney improves your marketing strategy in all spheres of digital marketing.
Alt text can serve as an anchor text for image links
Let’s remind ourselves what an anchor text is. The words that can be clicked to take you to another website are known as “anchor text.” It helps Google understand the website and its content better. This leads us to the following conclusion:
If you do choose to link to an image, providing its alt text can help Google learn more about the page you are connecting to.
How to optimize your website using alt text?
If you already have some obsolete blog posts that lack alt text, make sure you optimize them. Let’s take through all the steps to do it:
l Locate your most popular pages using organic search
l open the busiest page
l Roll over the pictures to check if alt text is missing
l Optimize the images with alt text
l Repeat this process for your other popular pages
Note: don’t obsess over this, because the majority of your traffic probably comes from only a few pages, so optimize several of them and follow the results over time.
We’ve come to some final thoughts. Although the alt text for photos is hardly deserving of being the main focus of your SEO strategy, it is one of those minor yet significant components that should not be disregarded. If not, you’re offering your rivals additional chances to surpass you in search engine rankings. For any further information, don’t hesitate to contact a reliable SEO agency. Create alt text for photos as a routine procedure anytime you upload an image to your website.
