How to write SEO-friendly alt text for your images?

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Are you putting this adage in practice?

Images and visual media make communicating easier. In terms of online websites and digital marketing, visual is the medium that’s growing like crazy. Even in the early days of printing, illustrated books and journals became a sensation. They made communication easier and more exciting.

Visual media gets its importance for a reason. First, images can make dull text and complex ideas much simpler to communicate. Adding images breaks the monotony and makes reading more pleasant.

As an Internet entrepreneur and online marketer, you can use images to convey your message effectively and attract more customers with image SEO. An optimized image can make your website reach more people through image searches.

What is alt text for images?

Alt text, or alternative text, is a text replacement for the visual. When an image fails to appear, the alternative text serves as a fallback and helps the reader with information on the missing image. The alt text is also designed serve as an assistive reading and accessibility tool for visually impaired.

The alt text wasn’t visualized for search engines, but it became on of the ways to identify and sort images by computers. The alt text was used as the identifier for images. Adding descriptive alt text and titles for images was recommended for better rankings in image searches.

Here’s an example of an image HTML tag:

<img src=”/seo-blogger.jpg” alt=”A Caucasian man holding a laptop and a golden trophy” title=”Top SEO Blogger”/>

What do you note in the example HTML tag for an image?

An image can have two important attributes — an alt attribute and a title attribute.

The title attribute is designed to show a descriptive text (image title) on mouse hover. In contrast, the alt attribute serves more function purpose of serving as a fallback description.

Search engines also rely on the alt text for information regarding images. When you have an image in your web page, you should include an alt text with it.

In the modern times, search engines rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify images. Search engines can now see images without any assistive technology. The dependence on alt text doesn’t exist. However, it is still not redundant. When properly used, alt text can help you with better ranking in image searches.

How to write SEO-friendly image alt descriptions?

Here are a few tips to help you write SEO-friendly image alt texts.

1. Write descriptive and accurate alt text that helps in correctly visualizing the image.
2. Your alt image text should match with the image and not with the content.
3. Don’t use random text as your alt text.
4. Don’t stuff keywords in image alt text.
5. Don’t leave image alt text empty.

You should also use only relevant images and visuals in your web pages. Don’t use irrelevant visuals.

Also, you should use a descriptive text as your image file name. For instance, if you have an image of an SEO expert working on a laptop, try to name the file with your keywords. Eg: seo-expert-laptop.jpg.

Don’t try to cheat Google by adding misleading descriptions for images. Search engines are becoming smarter by the day, and they can now see images too. Be honest with your image descriptions. Assist Google in understanding your images. If you provide a misleading description, you won’t be doing very good in image search.