What is Alt Text?
Introduction
Alt Text is known as Alt Description or Alt tags. It allows you to describe an image of the content and helps you crawl and rank your page on google. It also provides screen reading tools to describe the image of the content.
Whatever business you do online, you must perform SEO, and alt text is key to creating a successful user experience, no matter how they found your page.
How to Add Alt Text?
In WordPress, when you click to add a featured image, select the picture you want to use for your feature image. After selecting the image, you will get a bar to add alt text.
In that bar, write the text you want to include for the content. It should be relevant to your content. You have added your alt tag for the image.
Importance of Alt Text
There are numerous reasons why alt text is essential. Let us highlight some of the reasons why it is necessary for your website:
Image Traffic:
Here is how you get image traffic: Once you add alt text for the image, it alerts the google algorithm to turn your image into a hyperlink that will appear in google images once the content gets indexed on google.
Once your image appears on google images, organic traffic on your website can be increased. In addition, it will result in more visitors to your page.
User Experience:
When we start our business online, the vital thing is to give users the best experience because that helps us grow our business. So here comes the role of alt text. First, to improve the users’ experience.
Let us put it in simple terms if any user has bandwidth issues (Due to slow internet, the image could not load) So here the user can read the alt tag and understand what the image is.
Accessibility:
Once you use the alt text in your content, there are chances that it will pop up in the “Table of Contents.” So here what happens is the user can read the image from the table of contents. And also, it allows the google algorithm to understand what the image is about.
In other words, your image is accessible to everyone because alt text defines what the image is about and why it is used in the particular content. Google uses alt tag information to find the purpose of the specific image in your content.
These are some of the explanations why alt tag is essential. Sometimes we tend to ignore these tiny little details when creating our content, but they play a crucial role in our content. So you make sure you pay attention to every little detail while creating the content.
SEO and Alt Text
It would be best if you kept in mind that google uses alt text to understand the image. So they see if the image is relevant to your content. So make sure whenever you write your alt tag, it should have a focused keywords so when google crawls your page, it will be easier to get ranked on the search engine.
The chances of ranking your page on google increases when you have a descriptive image. It creates a better understanding for users and search engines too. So try to add appropriate and relevant alt tag for the image in your content.
Avoid unnecessary usage of words unrelated to your content or image. Your page can be seen as spam, and it will have a negative user experience. So be careful with it. Try to describe your content correctly so the user will more easily find the pages.
How to Write a Good Alt Text
Here are some points you should consider while writing a good alt text:
Be specific with your content. Don’t write unnecessary information that has nothing to do with your content.
Describe the image with your alt text and content. It means your content, image and alt tag should be interlinked for best understanding.
Never start the alt text with terms like “image of” Think how irritating it would be for someone to see it. People know what they have access to, so don’t write such terms that make no sense or anything pointless.
Don’t write anything apart from the subject. What “I see, I will write” is not an option while writing alt tag. Stuffing useless information or anything inappropriate will not help you in the long run. On the contrary, it will decrease your organic traffic.
Conclusion
Alt text is the critical factor for your page to crawl on google. So next time, consider all the essential points before your write alt tag for your image. It will help your page appear on Google and increase your organic traffic and user experience. Making changes to your minor mistakes can significantly impact your online business.
