Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical part of driving revenue through your website. Most marketers know the basics like an SEO title or meta description, but many forget or don’t realize the importance of SEO tags and alt descriptions.
As of the most recent updates from Google, helpful content will improve site rankings. Being “helpful” also includes things like helping Google recognize what your content is, and this includes tags and descriptions. Without alt text on your images, then it is less likely that Google will index them and rank them. While we can’t measure the exact hit to SEO that it will take, it is better to include these items to improve the ease at which Google can read and understand your page.
Read on to learn what these alt descriptions and tags are and how to choose the best one for SEO.
What is Image SEO?
Image SEO is an integral part of a digital marketing strategy that can even increase your website’s ranking in image searches.
Image optimization is a crucial strategy for your website.
Proper naming of your image files and compressing your images will increase site speed. Image time to load is not just an annoyance to the user but also a ranking factor taken into account by Google.
Adding images to your content can help your website appear more prominently on search results rankings, attracting more visitors making their way over from the search engines. As a result, you should also increase sales with a fully optimized site due to the increased number of users you’ll be drawing. In short, image SEO is an excellent way to increase the traffic to your site by making it more visible on search engines.
Your site’s images should reinforce your business message and encourage visitors to stop on your content.
What are Alt Descriptions or Alt Text?
Alternative text (alt-text), or alt descriptions, is an HTML tag or text that accompanies an image on a website in order to help ensure that it’s contextually relevant to the rest of the content on your site.
Alt descriptions are crucial to your website for two reasons:
- Many people rely on screen readers to deliver content on-screen easily.
- Search engines like Google check the alt-text to assure that users find it relevant.
Alternate descriptions can help if an image is slow or not loading. The reader will be able to read the text themselves without the image present to determine relevance.
This is why it is essential to develop good alt descriptions for your images. Some of the benefits of using alt descriptions include:
- Provide more information about your product or service, which can help you improve conversions and sales
- Increase clickthrough rates
- Boost your website’s visibility on search engines
- Improve user experience by providing more context for your images
What are the Differences Between Image Titles and Image Alt Tags?
Google image SEO includes both tags for image alt text and image title tags. The differences between image titles and the image alt tags are below.
- Image titles enhance user experience, while image alt tags are crucial for screen readers and search engine crawlers.
- Image titles are visible on the web page, whereas image alt tags are not visually displayed on the web page.
- When describing the image’s purpose, image alt tags should be concise, while image titles can be more elaborate to communicate effectively with the user.
- The image titles appear as tooltips when hovering over the image, while image alt tags serve as an alternative text description of the image.
- Using both image alt tags and image attributes together can provide significant benefits for SEO and UX purposes.
Image titles are optional attributes added to an image to provide additional information about the image. They are displayed as tooltips when the user hovers over the image. These are also known as a title tag. Image titles are mainly used to improve user experience by providing a brief description or a context for the image.
Comparatively, alt tags are mandatory attributes that are used to describe the content of an image in a textual format. They are used by screen readers for visually impaired users and search engines to understand the content of an image. Image alt tags should provide a concise and accurate description of the image to ensure accessibility and improve search engine optimization (SEO).
While image titles are used to enhance user experience, image alt tags are essential for accessibility and SEO purposes. It is recommended to use both image titles and image alt tags to provide a comprehensive description of the image for all users.
Why is Image SEO Necessary?
Google has already evolved to solve the problem of new ideas and trends in the industry. This could be a crucial year not just for style but also for search optimization. Images help a website succeed on the internet, and with today’s technology, business owners can use images as part of a content marketing strategy to optimize content. Tags with alt descriptions are essential in helping search engine crawlers find images and index them correctly.
Here are some reasons why SEO tags, like the SEO image tag, alt tag, and meta tag are video for Google image search ranking.
Provide Context to Your Readers
Whenever possible, try to use images. Graphics can help illustrate your points and make it easier for readers to visualize what you’re trying to say.
Images are essential to any website. They are a visual representation of your content and help compel potential customers to stay on your website longer or even buy your product or service. A picture doesn’t just speak for itself, so to speak. You’ll need to put some effort into making them work to get the most effect. Using a combination of diverse styles and images, you can use these unique tones and incorporate them into your company as an effective marketing technique.
Aside from providing context to your website visitors, if you don’t optimize your images with search engine-friendly names, descriptions, and titles, they won’t appear high on the results page, so you will have no traffic coming to your site.
Why You Should Optimize Image Alt Attribute for Accessibility
Alt-text is an HTML attribute that can be added to an image tag. The alt text will show up when the image doesn’t load properly, or a web filter blocks an image. Telling the browser what an image actually shows on your website is simple. Many will also use that automatically generated text and more information about an image, such as its title and category, as alt-text.
If your image can’t be displayed on your website, your visitors should still be able to understand what the images are about with just a bit of text. Screen-readers also use alt text to help visually impaired people distinguish different backgrounds on images.
For example, here is a sample of alt text in the HTML code for an image of baby rabbits in a basket:
<img src=”baby-bunny-basket.jpg” alt=”Cute baby bunnies in basket” />
The words after the alt= tag are known as the alt text.
Alt-text is a type of content for images that provides an additional description for each image targeted primarily for accessibility purposes. Alt text can help improve your site’s SEO performance and ensure an image is properly crawled by search engines.
How to Come up with SEO Friendly Alt Text Descriptions for Your Images
Before creating your alt text, you first need to go through your existing photos and find the most important details. Doing this will help you select what kind of alt text will be most relevant for your business.
Many of us don’t know how to write a good description, often landing on basic descriptions. When this happens, those words are read by a robot deployed by the search engine, which plugs them into the wrong places or overlooks them completely.
Adding alt text to images can help them rank better in search engines. To do it properly, you should use keyword-rich alt text, so your images gain the most visibility possible. You can get more clicks on your website with image captions because Google also uses image search results as part of its algorithm.
It can be tough to write web page content in a way that meets search engine rules and is still readable by people. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing image alt text:
Use Descriptive Language
An image’s alt text should explain what the image is so that it can help search engines better understand your website’s content. It should also be specific so that a user will know what the image is about, not just a title. If you take the time to think about your users and make sure that they’re happy, you’ll win more business and provide a better user experience.
When deciding on a description, a good exercise is to imagine that you’re describing the image to someone who can’t see it. This is why details are essential, and the more detailed the description, the better.
Use a Keyword or Keyphrase
As with your written content, you shouldn’t include multiple keywords in alt-text because Google penalizes keyword stuffing. Adding relevant keywords and phrases to your image will improve the way it reads and allow you to have another keyword or keyphrase on your page, further improving your SEO.
SEO Tips for Creating a Good Alt Description
Because the purpose of an alt description is to provide context for the image, it should be a short phrase that helps describe the image and its significance.
The first thing to remember is that your readers want to know more about the image. Similar to writing content that delivers on providing a solution to a problem, you need to determine what your readers are looking for. What is your marketing plan? What type of information are you looking for from them?
Aim to go into detail when writing your alternative description.
For instance, a non-SEO friendly description of a flower would be:
<img src=”image1.jpg” alt=”flower” />.
This description only gives the reader the idea that a flower is in the picture.
An image alt text that is SEO-friendly would describe the image like this instead:
<img src=”red-tulip-flower.jpg” alt=”beautiful red tulip with greenery” />
Website visitors will understand that this is a flower, but it is also red and beautiful. Furthermore, the reader will understand that the image is a tulip, and greenery is included in the photo, even if they don’t see the image.
Your blog posts should always include images. They are great for grabbing the reader’s attention and giving them a visual representation of what you’re talking about. But, you also need to make sure that you’re using images with alt text that is SEO friendly.
Make your Images Search Engine Friendly
You can increase the traffic on your site by making sure images are correctly optimized. This will not just improve their loading time but also your user experience.
And it’s not just optimizing image file names and alt tags that help improve how the page is seen. Optimization also helps involve your other business marketing efforts so that the right people (potential customers) see your content at the right time (when they are looking to buy).
Keeping up with Google’s various image optimization requirements can be a challenge. Still, business owners need to make sure their images are optimized to get ahead of the competition.
okwrite can help your business optimize images, which can be a real asset for search engines and accessibility. It also helps with your overall website visibility. In addition to being great for accessibility, adding alt-text to images will also help your followers understand what your content is all about.
Let us give you an edge with our customizable content solutions, so we can deal with the difficult aspects of SEO while you focus on what matters most to your business.
