Is Alt Text Important For Image SEO: Useful Guide
In short, alt text is important for image SEO. It allows Google to understand the content of your images so you can show up in Google image search. Alt text also improves accessibility for certain user groups and can act as anchor text for image links. Google Search Central have stated adding alt text is a best practise, and are also present in the 200 ranking factors Google uses to rank your content. Therefore, yes, alt text is important for SEO.
If you’re a blogger, you may also find these 19 best sites to get copyright free images for your blog useful, and definitely these 25 ‘request to join’ Pinterest blogging group boards. You may also enjoy how I grew my email list to 125 subscribers in my first week blogging!
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Alt Text Useful Guide Layout
• What is Image Alt Text, & What Does Alt Tags or Alt description Mean?
• What Does Alt Text Mean To Your Readers?
• Why Are Image Alt Tags Important?
– Reason 1: Improves Accessibility For Visually impaired or Blind Users
– Reason 2: Alt Text Acts as Anchor Text for Image Links
– Reason 3: Alt Text Allows Google To Understand Image Content & Rank Images In Search Queries (Improves SEO)
• How Important are Image Alt Tags For SEO?
• How Do I Write Alt Text For SEO & What Should Be in An Alt Tag?
• When Should You Not Use Alt text?
• How To Add Alt Tags To Images In WordPress? (How Do I Find The Alt Tag Of An Image?)
• Is Alt Text Important For Image SEO: Final Thoughts
What is Image Alt Text, & What Does Alt Tags or Alt description Mean?
There are so many words banded about for alt text. The very definition of alt text, due to varying terminology alone, can get quite confusing for new bloggers and website owners. Moving forward, alt text also refers to ‘alt tags’ and ‘alt descriptions’ so if these words are used interchangeably, they refer to the same thing.
Alt text (alternative text) is a short description of an image on your website. It describes what the image shows, purpose of the image and sometimes function of the image. For example, if you use a clickable image on your site to convert readers to email subscribers, your alt text may read ‘button to subscribe to X email list’.
What Does Alt Text Mean To Your Readers?
Alt text means that when an image cannot be viewed for whatever reason, this alt text appears and allows the individual to make sense of what the image shows. An example of this is if the image fails to load, or if you have a visually impaired reader using screen-reading tools. It means readers will still be able to understand your image.
Why Are Image Alt Tags Important?
Reason 1: Improves Accessibility For Visually impaired or Blind Users
As touched upon above, you will have visually impaired users visit and use your site. It is vital that you be inclusive and understand the importance of allowing these readers the same opportunity to understand what your images are showing.
An alt text allows screen-reading tools to read the alt description to these users. Imagine if you were visually impaired and a website didn’t accommodate this? You wouldn’t return or use that site. This means by not adding alt text you could be losing viewers.
Reason 2: Alt Text Acts as Anchor Text for Image Links
What on earth does that mean? Put simply, anchor text is a link in the form of clickable words to other content. These words, if clicked, can link from one of your pages to another, for example. This helps users navigate around your site, but also helps Google better understand the relevancy of your article in a search query.
A link to other content does not just have to be text. You can use images to link between content. Therefore, the alt text for your image serves as the anchor text (link to other content).
Reason 3: Alt Text Allows Google To Understand Image Content & Rank Them In Search Queries
Besides helping visually impaired users, alt tags help image SEO on your website and increase your chance of higher search rankings.
This is because people can also use Google image search. Therefore, not only do you have a chance to rank for the text and keywords in your articles, but also for the images used throughout.
But, how can images rank when search engines like Google CANNOT read images? Interestingly enough, search engines CAN read your alt text to understand an image. So, by writing good, optimised alt text for all of your images, you significantly increase the chance that your images will rank on Google image search. This is because Google can better categorise your content which can significantly increase your traffic.
By using your keywords in your optimised alt text, you’re again showing Google your image relevance to a search query. However, similarly with all SEO practise, do not just stuff in keywords to your alt text.
Even Neil Patel stated in this article that ‘alt tags are an SEO opportunity that many people miss’. Alt tags will ‘increase your chance of people finding your content organically’.
How Important are Image Alt Tags For SEO?
You may now be wondering, ‘okay… so alt text is important. But will it make a big difference to my overall SEO score in the grand scheme of things? How much does alt text really help SEO?’
This is where it becomes important to understand just how significant these image alt tags can be to your SEO, especially if you use a lot of images. Google Search Central themselves have put together a document titled ‘Google Images Best Practises’. This article not only details best image practises in general, but low and behold covers a section specifically on alt tags.
If Google are writing that you should ‘use descriptive alt text’ as a best practise, it shows that alt tags are pretty significant.
Another article on BACKLINKO written by Brian Dean details ‘Googles 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List’. Number 29 is image optimisation, which includes the use of alt text. Number 91 also suggests alt tags are important as ‘alt text acts as anchor text for images.’
Whilst there are other major ranking factors to help your SEO, by adding alt text as a standard practise of yours when you add images is a great idea. So, how important are image alt tags for SEO? Pretty darn important! It is however important to recognise that other factors are MORE important, such as content relevance and quality.
How Do I Write Alt Text For SEO & What Should Be in An Alt Tag?
So we know alt text is important. But, it’s also important to write them properly.
As mentioned above, Google Search Centre says you should ‘use descriptive alt text’. But what does this mean? Follow these points on writing a good-quality alt text and you won’t go far wrong:
1) The description should be useful to the reader and accurately describe what the image is showing IN DETAIL. It can include your keyword in an authentic way. Ensure that it is full of information relevant to the image so search engines can understand the image in the context of the page.
EXAMPLE: If you have an image of a car you are showing for a specific purpose:
Bad: alt = “image3”
Bad: alt = “Image of car”
Bad: alt = “Car, Mercedes, best car model, cost of Mercedes, Mercedes-Benzs insurance, Mercedes VS Porsche, different Mercedes models”
Okay: alt = “yellow car”
Good: alt = “yellow, Mercedes-Benz”
Best: alt = “yellow, Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing model”
2) You may be tempted to fill the entire alt text space… do not do this. Be as concise as possible. Alt text that is too long often has irrelevant details and can annoy those using screen-reading tools.
3) You also need to ensure that you do NOT just start keyword stuffing in general. This means getting all the keywords you are targeting in your article and just writing them into an alt tag that makes no sense.
4) It may be tempting to start you off, but do not state in the alt text that it is an image. For example, do not start an alt text with ‘This image is showing…’ or ‘This is an image of…’. Users and Google already know this.
SIDE TIP: Read your alt text back to yourself without looking at the image to see if you have accurately described what the image is about. You could even read your alt text to a friend and then show them the image to see if they feel it describes the image. Check out the link above written by Google Search Centre to show you examples of good or bad alt text descriptions.
When Should You Not Use Alt text?
If you have added an image to a post purely for decorative purposes that does not offer important information to the reader, you do not need to add an alt text.
A good example of this is when we add stock images to make a post look pretty (Check out these best sites to get copyright free images for your website). Take the image below:
This is an image of someone on a laptop. For the reader it may be nice to see as it breaks up the text and shows someone working on their blog. However, to Google and to the visually impaired, this adds no value therefore does not need an alt tag description.
You need to weigh up whether you’ve added an image for a specific reason, or whether it is just there to look nice.
How To Add Alt Tags To Images In WordPress? (How Do I Find The Alt Tag Of An Image?)
Whenever you upload and image to your WordPress website, before you input it into your content you can edit the alt tag in the following menu:
On the right-hand side above image title, there is a field to fill in your alt text. (You can also fill in your image title, caption and description which is also important for image SEO).
Simply fill in all the fields and insert the image into your post. For very little effort, alt tags are a great opportunity!
Is Alt Text Important For Image SEO: Final Thoughts
This article has covered why image alt text is important, how important these image alt tags are to your SEO, and also how to add these to your images.
You can see how simple adding an effective alt text can be. It takes seconds and can have large benefits on your image SEO. For little effort there can be large rewards. Therefore, alt text is important for you image SEO.
If you’re a blogger, you may also find this article detailing 37 different types of blog posts you can write an interesting read to keep your content fresh. If you enjoyed this article, I definitely think you’ll enjoy reading about how I grew my email list to 125 subscribers in my first week blogging.
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