Why You Should Use Alt Text for Images

Posted / 07 October, 2021

Author / Enginess

If you are like most people, then you don't pay much attention to the alt text on images. You might even think that it's not very important or useful. But if you're wrong about this, your website could be penalized by Google for having bad SEO practices!

Today, we will tell you why using alt text for images is so important and how to use them correctly.

The alt text for an image is a short piece of text that you can use to describe the image. This is important because it helps search engines understand what the image is about. If you don't include any alt text, then the search engine will just see the filename of the image, which might not be very helpful in understanding what the image is about.

Including alt text on your images can also help improve your website's SEO ranking. This is because Google takes into account how well you are using keywords on your website when determining your ranking. So if you include keywords in the alt text for your images, it will help you rank higher in search engine results pages.

So now you know how important it is to use alt text for your images. But what are the best ways to do this? The following tips will help you make sure that your alt text is effective and optimized for SEO:

  • Use keywords in your alt text, but don't go overboard. Just like with any other part of your website, you should use keywords on your images but don't overdo it and make sure that the alt text is still useful.

  • Don't repeat the filename of an image in the alt text. If a search engine sees something like this: /images/picture_name.jpg then they will assume that there's no difference between the image name and the alt text.

  • Make sure that you include keywords in the first sentence of your alt text. This will help Google understand what an image is about even if they can't see it or don't know what to do with it since some images are too small and blurry for them to recognize on their own.Don't make your alt text too long. It should be no more than 150 characters, otherwise the search engines will ignore it. Keep in mind that some browsers don't show images if they are wider than 200 pixels and so you shouldn't use words or phrases on your website with a width of over 200 pixels to avoid any issues with how the image will display.

  • Don't forget to include an alt text for images that are links! Search engines can use this information about your site when determining how relevant it is in search results and so you want them to be able to find all of your links, even if they don't have any keywords on the,


Those are some tips for making your alt text effective.

Plan your project right - a step-by-step guide to ensure a successful digital project launch. Read now.

Topics

See all ≫ ≪ Hide all

Subscribe to Enginess Digital Insights


Share the insights /