ALT TAG – How Do Alt Tags Improve SEO Rankings?
Another factor that will be impacting the SEO rankings of your website is the alt tags. Now, what are they? How to use alt tags to enhance SEO rankings? Provided are the answers to your questions as well as some tips to follow if you wish to have the best SEO and rankings.
What are Alt Tags?
Basically, Alt tags are HTML attributes that are applied to image tags in order to give text alternative to the search engines. They are also known as alt description or alt attribute. In addition, the application of images to alt tags will positively and surely impact your search engine rankings.
Text ALT Tag Example (Try Here)
<img src="seo-traffic.gif" alt="our seo traffic for the month">
Image ALT Tag Example (Try Here)
<img src="seo-traffic.png" alt="image of seo traffic for the month">
Empty ALT Tag is bad for SEO
Never leave alt tags empty alt=""> always add text alt="your text here">
<img src="pancakes.png" alt="">
Too much ALT Tag is bad for SEO
<img src="seo-traffic.png" alt="this is seo traffic image which show how the seo works, as you can see there is huge peak in the traffic due to new google update and it looks very good"> The Importance of Alt Tags:
Your usage of images will definitely impact the way your website is viewed by visitors. Therefore, this step is extremely crucial to your SEO and rankings. People can easily interpret the meanings behind images, however, robots can’t do the same in terms of web pages and search engines. Therefore, alt tags came to save the day. The main purpose of this tag is to provide a text that is readable by search engines on those images. Thus, when images are formatted with alt text, it will make it possible for Google and other search engines to interpret and inspect the page. And accordingly, these images will play a great role on how the page is indexed and on its ranking.
Moreover, these alt tags are of great help when it comes to visitors and viewers on browsers that cannot process images.
Alt Tags and Improving SEO:
Now, how to utilize this tag to the process of enhancing your SEO is a simple task. Basically, as previously mentioned, Google and other major search engines are machines that don’t understand visual images due to their algorithm. Therefore, using alt tags, your page will be given a boost as they provide a helpful relevance signal to major search engines. Consequently, organic traffic will be driven to your website via the stuffing keyword strategy. However, keep in mind that the strategy of stuffing keyword will only work short term for you and that if you wanted to have long term impacts and long-lived gains, then try using a more natural language that is simple, descriptive, searchable, and clear.
Tips to Follow When Using the Alt Tag:
First of all, make sure to optimize your images for the speed of the site and that you are using the same keywords like the ones in the content of your page. Second, in order to get the most benefit from your image, then your text should be short. That’s because the shorter your text is, the more efficient it will be indexed by search engines like Google. Plus, remember to mention the topic of your content in the alt text. Again, you do not want to stuff your images with texts since search engines do not favor such actions. In addition, you should write alt text for all your images as it will provide easier accessibility and better user experience. Plus, do not use phrases like “image of” or ” a picture of” because they are only a waste of space; and you would want to keep it up to 100 characters maximum. Moreover, do not forget that titles, meta-descriptions, and other inter-linking are actually more significant to your SEO, so don’t make the mistake of prioritizing alt tags over them.
So, the alt text should not be the target of your SEO strategy and they should not be the first thing you address in your SEO strategies. However, due to their indirect impact, give your alt text a check after addressing the more important technical issue and other content optimization strategies.
If you have enjoyed reading this, then please read more on SEO tips here, we have loads of great tips and tutorials for you.
