What is Alt Text and Why is it Important for SEO

Alt text, also known as alternative text, explains the look or use of an image on a web page. Alt text is alternative information for an image, usually describing what appears in the photo. It’s read aloud by screen readers used by people who are blind or have low vision, and it also displays instead of an image if it can’t load. Plus, search engines index alt text to help them understand what your page is about. Alt text is used within an HTML code or in the appropriate field in your Content Management System.

Adding alt text to images on your site is a principle of web accessibility. It also enables screen readers to read the information about on-page images for the benefit of a person who is otherwise unable to view the images on the page. Alt text will be displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot load. It also provides better image context/descriptions to search engine spiders, helping them to index and rank an image properly in image search and provides search engines with contextual information about the content on the page. The bottom line is, you don’t want to skip out on adding accurate alt text to your website’s images.

What Makes Alt Text so Vital?

Accessibility:

Adding alt text to images is essential for accessible web design because it describes the image to visitors who cannot see it. This not only includes screen readers and browsers that block images, but also users who are visually impaired or otherwise unable to identify an image. By including alt text with images, all users – regardless of visual ability – can enjoy the content on your website.

Image search SEO:

By including image alt text, you not only improve the user experience and accessibility, but also gain both explicit and implicit SEO benefits. When you optimize your images for search engines, it helps the image rank higher in image searches and image packs. For optimum results when users enter text-based queries, focus on helping images surface more often. To do this, follow image SEO best practices such as modern file formats, alt text, relevant file names, and schema markup. All of these things will assist Google in better understanding the images on your site and returning a relevant image search result.

Although search engine image recognition technology has progressed in recent years, it’s still not as reliable as human interpretation. If you leave the photos on your website page up to the crawlers, they might misunderstand and rank you for unintended keywords, or refuse to rank you at all.

Context:

Not only should you implement image title and file naming best practices, but including alt text is essential to ensure that all users and bots can understand your website content. Alt text also provides you with another chance to include your target keyword. Given that on-page keyword usage is still a search engine ranking factor, it’s in your best interest to create alt text that both describes the image and, if possible, includes a keyword or keyword phrase you’re targeting.

Furthermore, if you’re relying on image search traffic for your SEO strategy, then giving Google the appropriate information about your images is a great way to show topic relevancy. You can optimize this by using modern file formats, alt text, descriptive file names and schema markup.

Looking for an SEO Expert to Help With Your Alt Text and Website SEO?

TJB WebMedia is one of the top ranked SEO company in New Jersey. We understand that voice search SEO plays a vital role in growing your small business. That’s why we focus on developing customized campaigns either on their own or as part of a comprehensive SEO strategy. We specialize in creating SEO optimized posts for any type of organization. The bottom line is whatever your need, we have the talent and staff to make it happen. We also specialize in comprehensive NJ SEO and NJ web design.