When you think of SEO, you likely think of title tags, meta descriptions, and h tags. However, alt text is just as important. Discover more about this lesser-known SEO component so that you can include it in your SEO campaign.
What Is Alt Text?
Alt text is any text that you add to an image with HTML coding. Alt text is different from the actual image name, as alt text’s main purpose is to describe the image. You can use alt text to include keywords for SEO or provide clarity to an image’s purpose on a webpage.
How Can You Use Alt Text Effectively?
Alt text can positively impact your website’s SEO. However, you need to know how to use it properly.
One way to ensure effective use is to provide more than short one- or two-word descriptions. These often don’t provide any clarity and are usually too general to be of any help. Writing a short phrase or sentence will better describe what the image is and how it fits in with your website.
Another thing to do is to ensure you write in your keywords naturally. Just as you would with any other type of SEO content, you want your keywords for alt text to make sense, be easy to read, and incorporate themselves neatly into the overall website. Readers are pretty adept at picking out unnatural or grammatically incorrect keywords or phrasing. Do your readers a favor with clear, straightforward keywords.
How Does Alt Text Benefit You and Your Website?
So why incorporate alt text into your overall SEO campaign? This SEO tool provides many benefits to you, many of which are unique from other SEO components.
Increases Site Visibility
Alt text is an additional component to enhance your overall web presence by providing clarity, guidance, and purpose for your images. Better alt text means that the images on your website may be found more frequently when people search for images. That way, people who might bypass normal text-based searches can discover your website.
Brings More People to Your Website
With increased site visibility often comes more search engine traffic. People often use image searches for various purposes. If you have descriptive and effective SEO-targeted alt text, people might be more inclined to click on the image and go to your website.
From there, they can make sure that the image relates to the webpage and explore further. This can increase your chances for engagement, leads, sales, or appointments.
Provides Reference Material
If you have an informational website, good alt text for images can help readers, researchers, or curious web searchers. For example, someone might want to know more about a specific historical figure, understand a specific industry term, or discover more about a certain part for their HVAC system.
An image with the appropriate alt text can guide readers to the right reference pages and provide visual representation to help them understand more about what they’re searching for.
Helps Shoppers
Another major component for images is for product searches. As interested customers look for specific products online, they often like to see what these products look like. An image helps them visualize the product, explore how they might use the product themselves, discover what they like or dislike about the product, and decide whether they want to purchase the product.
However, without effective alt text, customers won’t be able to easily find these product images. If you operate an e-commerce website, alt text on your images provides invaluable information about your products. You can incorporate details like the product name, SEO keywords, location where the product is, or specific descriptions about the product.
Offers a Look at Services
If you have people interested in your services, pictures of the services themselves can generate interest and leads. People might be curious at what the service exactly is or what it looks like. With the proper alt text, you can help people see your services in action and determine if your company is the one they want to learn more about or hire.
Identifies Specific People
Does your business rely on the accomplishments or education of a specific person, such as a lawyer or doctor? Then alt text can provide an opportunity for people to see and identify that person. Alt text can indicate what the person does, what licenses or certifications they hold, or what role they play in the company. This, in turn, can perhaps lead to more appointments and long-term customers.
How Can You Get Started With Better SEO?
Do you want to include alt text in your SEO campaign? Start by contacting Grow Team. We can review your website and recommend specific ideas to enhance your SEO and overall digital marketing. Sign up for your free evaluation today, and we’ll help you get started.