Image Alt tag: Why it matters to the SEO of your website?
Have you optimized the content of your website, blogs, Meta descriptions, and sub headers of your website? Are you happy to have an optimized website that can load within fractions of a second? Stop here, what about the images? These days, search engines are showing as much as image results as that of text result, right? Popular search engines such as Google pulls in clickable images at the Google search engine result page that can bring good traffic to your website.
Despite making everything optimized, if you are not working on images, then you might lose a major part of potential visitors towards your website.
Most of the time, to provide the relevant information to your visitors, you need to embed the photographs on your website. Like in case if you are guiding your visitors on “How to use the software?” then you need to add screenshots of the software in addition to the text, right? Yes, to provide relevant information to your users, you have to embed images along with the content to your website.
This is when an image alt tag comes into existence.
Let us now discuss, “what is image alt tag?”
Alt descriptions are another name of the alt tag. It is a written copy that has appeared at the place of an image on a website if an image does not load on the user’s screen. This allows the search engines to crawl a website; therefore, your website will get a higher rank in the search engine result page. To create a better user experience for your visitors, the image alt tag is a good option and one important part in SEO.
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Some practices that help you to create the best Alt text!!!
Be descriptive and specific to us, the most important rule to follow when it comes to adding alt image text. Remember that you need to keep the alt image text-specific but also representative of the topic of the webpage. If the alt tag does not contain the image’s context, then it will lose its value. Have a look at these important keys to writing effective image alt text:
- Keep the alt text less than 125 characters:Make sure the alt text is lesser in characters because screen reading tools will cut off the long-winded alt texts at awkward moments. So make sure you keep the text less than 125 characters and be specific with the words you are using.
- Be specific with the words:Be specific to the information that is relevant to the image. Use every word in the context of the image and be specific with the words. This is the time when you have to play with your words to give a smoother experience to your customers.
- Don’tstart it with common words like “picture of….” or “image of….”: Just add the image description rather than writing all these common words as the screen reading tool will identify it as an image. As you need to be more descriptive in lesser words, so there is no need to add additional words.
- Don’tcram keyword over and over again in every single image text: If a web page contains a long list of the images, then it is not recommended you to add the keyword in every single image text. Just include the keyword into the one that is more representative of the information you are providing and use the aesthetic descriptions for all others.
- Use keywords sparingly:It is advisable to add only the target keywords to the text of the image. Semantic keywords will work in case if you don’t have the targeted keywords. Like in case if the keyword is “How to add alt image text,” then you can use the keyword “adding alt image text” because it will be difficult to add the word “how-to” in the image text naturally. So, using the most important terms from keywords with the long tail will be an ideal option for you.
So, now you know how you can create a good image alt text for your website to enhance the customer’s experience even when the image does not load at the user’s screen. If you already have a website, check whether you have added the image alt text or not. Consider performing a basic SEO audit now to know where you need to add image alt tag or which alt image texts need to be changed according to these tips so you can bring good traffic to your website.