What Is The Importance Of Associating Alternate Text With An Image?

Think skipping alt text for your website’s images is no big deal? Think again. Including alt text is crucial for making your site accessible and serves as a cornerstone for SEO image optimization. Let’s break down why alt text matters and how you can use it to supercharge your SEO efforts.

Images are a powerful tool for content creators. Whether they’re used to simplify complex ideas, grab a visitor’s attention, or provide visual relief to lengthy paragraphs, images breathe life into blog posts and webpages.

But here’s the kicker: images are just as essential for SEO as they are for aesthetics.

According to the latest Moz Cast stats, nearly 20% of Google search results now feature images. With Google steadily moving toward a visually driven search experience, more users are relying on images to find the information they need online.

This means neglecting alt text for your images isn’t just an oversight—it’s a missed opportunity. Optimizing your images with well-crafted alt text can drive organic traffic to your site, and failing to do so could leave you struggling to compete now and even further behind in the future.

Let’s dive into what makes image alt text so important, explore its SEO benefits, and share best practices for optimizing images for search engines.

Understanding Alt Text

Alt text, short for alternative text, is the written description that acts as a substitute for images on a webpage. It comes into play when images fail to load or for users who rely on assistive technologies, such as screen readers. For visually impaired individuals, alt text delivers essential details about the images, enhancing their browsing experience.

Similarly, search engines can’t interpret visual elements directly. Instead, they use alt text to understand the image’s content and its relevance within the page’s overall context. This makes alt text a key element for both accessibility and SEO.

If you examine the HTML of a webpage, you’ll find the alt text embedded like this:

<img src=”image.jpg” alt=”image description”>

Why Is Alt Text Essential?

From a practical standpoint, alt text enhances accessibility for users who are unable to view images on web pages. Ensuring accessibility is crucial for delivering an inclusive and seamless user experience, which aligns with Google’s commitment to user satisfaction. From an SEO angle, alt text plays a significant role by helping Google interpret the content of images in relation to the page’s context. Additionally, when an image serves as a link, the alt text acts as anchor text, a critical element in determining search engine rankings.

Alt Text & SEO: A Key to Image Optimization Success

Alt text plays a crucial role in enhancing accessibility and optimizing images for search engines. Let’s take a closer look at how you can leverage alt text as part of your broader SEO strategy for image optimization.

Google assigns significant importance to alt text. It not only uses alt text to understand the content of an image but also assesses its relationship with the surrounding text.

In fact, Google’s image optimization guidelines suggest that well-crafted alt text can boost your organic traffic conversion rates.

5 Best Practices for Writing SEO-Friendly Image Alt Text

Creating effective alt text requires a balance between being user-friendly and search-engine optimized. Here are five essential guidelines to help you craft alt text that serves both purposes.

1. Be Descriptive and Concise

Picture explaining an image over the phone—your alt text should deliver that same clarity. Use as few words as necessary to convey the meaning, but feel free to use a complete sentence if required. Keep in mind that most screen readers truncate alt text at around 125 characters, so brevity is key.

2. Skip Redundant Introductions

Avoid wasting valuable characters by starting with phrases like “This is a picture of…” or “Here’s a screenshot of…” Jump straight into describing the image. For example, instead of saying, “This is a photo of a pie chart showing market trends,” simply write, “Pie chart showing market trends.”

3. Use Keywords Strategically

Incorporate relevant keywords naturally into your alt text. Avoid overloading it with keywords, as it can degrade the user experience and flag your content as spammy. For instance, an optimized alt tag for a pie chart in a post about “featured snippets” could be: “Pie chart of common featured snippet types.” Overloading it might look like: “Pie chart of common featured snippet types to help you get featured snippets.”

4. Avoid Repeating Page Content

Alt text should complement—not duplicate—the content already on your page. If an infographic on your page details steps to complete a task, you don’t need to repeat those steps verbatim in the alt tag. Instead, focus on summarizing the image’s essence.

What about text in images?

Consider the significance of the text in the image. Include it in the alt tag if it contributes meaningful information, such as the title of a book cover, the heading of an infographic, or an essential brand name.

5. Skip Alt Text for Decorative Images

Decorative graphics, like background patterns or decorative dividers, don’t need alt text. Per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), omitting alt descriptions for purely decorative elements prevents unnecessary clutter for screen readers and improves the user experience.

By following these best practices, you can craft alt text that boosts SEO performance while prioritizing accessibility for visually impaired users.

Examples of Effective and Ineffective Alt Text

Crafting impactful alt text doesn’t require a lengthy description; it simply needs to be precise and detailed enough to support users effectively. Let’s look at examples of both effective and ineffective alt text practices based on the principles of good alt text writing:

Ineffective: This is a picture of a girl.
Effective: Young girl sitting on a bed at home using a digital tablet.

Ineffective: Tailor
Effective: Professional tailor using a measuring tape to alter a jacket in his workshop.

Ineffective: Pie chart.
Effective: Pie chart illustrating common featured snippets: 70 percent paragraphs, 19.1 percent lists, 6.3 percent tables, and 4.6 percent videos.

Additional Tip for Charts and Graphs

When working with charts or graphs, always provide a link to the original data source in the body copy rather than only citing it in the image. This ensures accessibility for visually impaired users, allowing them to engage with the full dataset.

In some cases, complex charts or graphs may require a more extended description to convey all relevant information.

Alt Text as Part of a Larger SEO Strategy

Writing clear and descriptive alt text is crucial, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle in optimizing images for SEO. Next, we’ll explore other strategies to ensure the visuals in your content enhance rather than hinder your overall SEO performance.

5 Strategies to Supercharge Your SEO with Image Optimization

1. Incorporate Keywords in Image File Names

The name you choose for your image file plays a significant role in SEO. Following a strategy similar to alt tag optimization is key. Ensure your image file names are relevant, descriptive, and include a targeted keyword.

To optimize effectively, start your image file name with your keyword and use hyphens to separate words. For example:

• pie-chart.png
  • This file name is too vague and doesn’t include a keyword.
• featured-snippets-types-pie-chart.png
  • This file name is optimized, leading with a keyword and providing clear context.

Google recognizes the individual words in file names thanks to hyphens, boosting their SEO value.

2. Choose the Optimal Image Format

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to image formats. Your choice should depend on the type of image and how it will be displayed.

Here are some recommendations:

• JPEGs: Ideal for larger images to maintain clarity. Remember, this refers to the image’s dimensions, not its file size.
• PNGs: Great for preserving transparent backgrounds.
• SVGs: A modern format that stays sharp at any resolution or dimension. These can also be animated and support transparency like PNGs.

3. Resize Images Appropriately

It’s crucial to differentiate between image size (dimensions like 1024 x 680 pixels) and file size (storage space, such as 5000 KB). Larger file sizes can slow down page load times, negatively impacting user experience and Google’s Core Web Vitals.

To optimize:

• Resize your images before uploading them to your site.
• Avoid relying on a CMS display size setting, as the full-size image still loads before being scaled, which doesn’t improve load time.

4. Leverage Captions for User Engagement

Although captions don’t directly impact SEO in the same way file names or alt text do, they contribute to a better user experience. Adding keywords here can risk over-optimization, which might hurt your rankings.

Instead, focus on making captions informative and engaging. Captions enhance readability, making content easier to scan. Studies suggest captions are read three times more often than body text. By using captions strategically, you can captivate your audience and increase their time spent on the page.

5. Optimize Alt Text for Accessibility and SEO

Alt text is a cornerstone of accessibility and a vital element of SEO. It helps visually impaired users understand your content and also improves your image’s visibility in search results. If you need more convincing, explore the topic further in “Why Is Alt Text Important.”

By implementing these strategies, you’ll create an optimized visual experience that enhances both user satisfaction and your site’s SEO performance.

Understanding Image Title Tags: What You Need to Know

The image title tag serves as an additional attribute to convey information about an image.

When applied, the title attribute generates a tooltip that becomes visible when sighted users hover over the image. However, it’s important to note that screen readers typically bypass this text, making it inaccessible to visually impaired users. For this reason, avoid placing critical information solely in the image title tag. Not only does this limit accessibility, but it also offers no direct impact on search engine rankings.

Top Free Tools for SEO-Friendly Image Optimization

Unlocking the power of SEO image optimization is easier than you think, especially with these free tools at your disposal. Here’s a curated list to kickstart your journey to optimized images and better rankings.

Must-Try Image Optimization Tools

A quick online search reveals plenty of image optimization tools, but these stand out for their functionality and ease of use:

• JPEG Optimizer: Perfect for compressing JPEG images while maintaining quality.
• Affinity Photo: A versatile tool for editing and enhancing images.
• Pixlr: A browser-based tool for quick image edits.
• Kraken.io: Best for bulk image compression.
• Optimizilla: Combines quality and compression control seamlessly.

Essential WordPress Plugins for Image Optimization

If you’re running a WordPress website, these plugins can streamline your image optimization efforts:

• Yoast SEO: Offers features to optimize images alongside content.
• ShortPixel: Compresses images without compromising quality.
• EWWW Image Optimizer: A plugin that automatically optimizes your images upon upload.
• WP Smush: Popular for its simplicity and efficiency.
• TinyPNG: Compresses PNG and JPEG files with impressive results.

Test Your Load Speed

After optimizing your images, it’s critical to evaluate your site’s load speed. For this, I highly recommend Google PageSpeed Insights. It evaluates both mobile and desktop performance, provides a detailed performance score, and highlights areas that need improvement.

Wondering why page speed is essential? Check out the importance of Google Ranking Factors and learn how a fast-loading website boosts your chances of ranking higher in search results.

Optimize your images, enhance user experience, and climb the search engine ladder with these indispensable tools.

Boost Your Rankings with SEO Image Optimization – Eclipse Can Help

Tapping into the power of image search through alt text and image optimization is a game-changing SEO strategy that many businesses overlook. By enhancing your images for search, you open the door to greater visibility and improved user engagement. Although there are numerous factors to address when optimizing images for SEO, you don’t have to navigate the process by yourself. Eclipse, a leading Digital Marketing Agency, offers expert guidance. Schedule a free SEO consultation with Eclipse today, and discover how their tailored image optimization strategies can elevate your website’s performance.

Conclusion

The importance of associating alternate text (alt text) with images cannot be overstated. It serves as a bridge between visual content and accessibility, enabling individuals with visual impairments to engage meaningfully with web content. Additionally, alt text significantly contributes to search engine optimization (SEO), enhancing your site’s visibility in image search results and driving organic traffic. As search engines increasingly prioritize user experience, well-crafted alt text ensures your content remains inclusive and relevant. By adopting best practices for writing descriptive, keyword-rich alt text, you align with accessibility standards and bolster your digital presence. Remember, optimizing alt text is not just a technical task; it’s a commitment to inclusivity and improved user experience. By investing time in this essential practice, you pave the way for long-term SEO success and foster a more accessible web for everyone.

FAQs

What is alt text, and why is it important?

Alt text, or alternative text, is a brief description of an image embedded in the HTML code. It is essential for enhancing accessibility for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers and for helping search engines understand the context of images. This makes it crucial for both inclusivity and SEO.

How does alt text impact SEO?

Alt text improves SEO by providing search engines with information about the content of images. This increases the chances of your images appearing in search results, driving organic traffic to your site. Additionally, alt text contributes to a better user experience, a key factor in search engine rankings.

What should I include in effective alt text?

Effective alt text should be concise, descriptive, and relevant. It should clearly convey the image’s content or purpose without being overly wordy. Incorporate keywords naturally to enhance SEO but avoid keyword stuffing, which can harm your rankings.

Should I write alt text for decorative images?

No, you should not write alt text for purely decorative images. Per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), decorative images should have empty alt attributes (alt=””) to prevent screen readers from reading unnecessary information, improving user experience for visually impaired individuals.

What are common mistakes to avoid when writing alt text?

Common mistakes include using generic descriptions like “image” or “photo,” starting with redundant phrases like “This is a picture of,” overloading the text with keywords, and repeating content already present on the page. Always focus on providing meaningful and specific descriptions that enhance usability and SEO.

Users Also Say

User 1:

“Alt text, also known as alternative text, serves a vital purpose for various reasons:

Accessibility: Alternative text describes images for individuals relying on screen readers due to visual impairments. This ensures that everyone, regardless of ability, can understand the significance and context of visual content.

SEO Advantages: Search engines analyze alt text to interpret image content. Crafting well-optimized alt text can boost a website’s search engine ranking, increasing its visibility and attracting more visitors.

Context for Content: Alt text communicates the purpose of an image when it fails to display, such as during slow loading times. This ensures users can still grasp the intended message or information even without the visual element.

Enhanced User Experience: Including alt text adds value by providing relevant details that complement images, making the overall content more engaging and informative for users.

Legal Obligations: Many regions enforce accessibility laws, mandating that websites accommodate individuals with disabilities. Proper implementation of alt text aids organizations in adhering to these regulations.

In essence, alternative text is indispensable for ensuring accessibility, boosting SEO, offering image context, enhancing the user experience, and maintaining legal compliance.”

User 2: 

“Alt text, short for alternative text, provides a descriptive explanation of an image that appears when the image cannot be displayed. It serves as an essential tool for individuals with visual impairments who rely on descriptions to understand the image’s content. Additionally, alt text helps search engines interpret image content. The alt attribute within images is used to convey what the image represents in text form. Assistive technologies like screen readers also utilize alt text to enable visually impaired users to navigate and understand websites effectively.“