When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), there are a lot of important factors that come into play. Your written content, web design and images all play a part in improving your ranking and establishing your online brand as professional and trustworthy. These pieces of content should include ranking factors such as external and internal links, meta descriptions and local SEO to improve search engine rankings.
Keyword research should be conducted when any search engine optimisation is being implemented. One important but often overlooked element of SEO maintenance is the implementation of alt tags in webpage images. These tags not only increase your online presence, but can improve the user experience for anyone who may be blind or visually impaired.
If you’re struggling to improve your search engine rankings, we’re here to help. Be My Social are a marketing agency providing SEO in Doncaster and beyond. Our dedicated team are on hand to help drive traffic to your site and help you generate revenue. Wondering how you can improve your alt tag implementation? Read our article below.
What is Alt Text?
Alt text, also known as an alternative description or an alt tag, is written text which is applied to an image to help give it more of an explanation. It was originally created to help the visually impaired understand what an image was showing them, as their screen reader can relay the alt text back to them. This helps improve the online experience for disabled users in the short and long term, and shows sites as being much more inclusive.
As well as providing this crucial service, alt tags also serve as a tool to help sites improve their SEO through image search. Most search engine optimisation is done through articles and site text, but images can be just as important in an SEO campaign. They provide context to an image, allowing search engines such as Google to index them correctly. Failing to include alt tags in your images can affect your website rankings.
Alt Text and SEO
As previously mentioned, SEO doesn’t just apply to your written copy. Applying alt text to images allows search engines to determine the context of an image, and whether it applies to the content of the written copy on the same page. Without them, search engines may not recognise your site as a reliable source, and can downrank you.
Also, alt tags come in handy when your web page fails to load the images. Instead of displaying the pictures, it will display the last text, making it easier for users to work out what the image is. Without it, it can be confusing to all users, not just the visually impaired. Good SEO in your alt tags can not only improve your ranking and drive traffic to your site, but can build up your reputation to regular customers. If your site is easy to navigate with accessible alt tags, it can encourage customers to return to your site following their positive previous experience.
How to Write Good Alt Tags
Writing alt tags is quite simple; you just need to explain exactly what the picture displays. However, when using this tag for search engine optimisation purposes, it’s worth including one or two keywords to fully enhance your position on search engines. That being said, try not to “keyword stuff,” as this can make the text hard to understand. Aim to keep them short, descriptive and to-the-point.
For instance, if you have an image of a woman typing at a computer, you wouldn’t just write “typing” or “computer.” You’d write exactly what you can see; “woman typing at a computer.” Whenever you upload an image, you should make it a habit to include alt text in every picture. Alt tags can help you become more noticed on search engines, and will allow you to generate more traffic.
In Conclusion
We hope that this article has made alt tags and their purposes a little easier to understand. Getting to grips with SEO and implementation can be tricky, but luckily, there are experts out there to help. Here at Be My Social, we help businesses improve their SEO in Doncaster and beyond, allowing an organisation to establish reliability and garner traffic and revenue.If you’re looking for search engine optimisation services to help your budding business grow online, please get in touch with us today by calling 01302 315 077. Alternatively, you can fill out our online form here.
