What is ALT Tag?

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

ALT tags are nothing but an HTML attribute. Which stands for alternative text. ALT tags are used to describe the image or what the image is representing. One of the main purposes of ALT tags is for the benefit of visually impaired users who use screen readers when browsing.

Search engines only “see” the text on web pages, and use the underlying HTML structure to determine relevance. Large images or dynamic Flash animation mean nothing to search engines, but the actual text on your pages does. Adding alternative text to photos is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility.

While search engine image recognition technology has vastly improved over the years and now it is capable to read images, But still can’t “see” the images on a website page as we can, so it’s not wise to leave the interpretation solely in their hands. If they don’t understand or get it wrong, it’s possible you could either rank for unintended keywords or miss out on ranking altogether.

Simple Example of Alt tag :

<img src=“pie.jpg” alt=“steak and ale pie”>

Do alt tags still matter?

Yes. they certainly do. Below, we take a look at why, and how you should take advantage of them.

1. Alt text improves accessibility: Millions of people are visually-impaired, and lots of uses screen readers to consume online content. Images without alt text increasing problems for screen readers because there’s no way to communicate the content of the image to the user.
2. Image SEO: Using alt text on your images can make for a better user experience, but it may also help earn you both explicit and implicit SEO benefits. Along with implementing image title and file naming best practices, including alt text, may also contribute to image SEO.
3. It can help to improve your rank in Google Images: Google Images is the world’s second-largest search engine. It’s responsible for 20.45% of all online searches, putting it ahead of YouTube, Bing, and other search engines combined.
4. Alt text serves as anchor text for image links: In case the image is used as a link, the alt text is used as the anchor text.

Tips for writing good alt text

1. Always write an Alt tag that describes the image as specifically as possible.
2. Do not include “this is image is for..”, “image of,” “picture of,” etc. in your alt text. It is not necessary.
3. Keep your alt text short. Always try to write its text between 100 to 130 characters.
4. Do not stuff unneeded keywords in your alt tag. Always use a keyword that is only related to your specific image.

Examples of Alt Text

Let’s make sure we understand what works and what doesn’t with a few examples.

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

Bad: <img src=”exercise.png” alt=”this is image is for exercise”>

Okay: <img src=”exercise.png” alt=”women exercise”>

Good: <img src=”exercise.png” alt=”women doing exercise”>

Best: <img src=”exercise.png” alt=”women doing weight lifting exercise”>

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

Bad: <img src=”gaming.png” alt=”this is image is for gaming”>

Okay: <img src=”gaming.png” alt=”gaming remote”>

Good: <img src=”gaming.png” alt=”gaming remote in hand”>

Best: <img src=”gaming.png” alt=”red gaming remote in hand”>

Conclusion

Optimizing Alt text is important and very useful for SEO purposes are well as screen readers, but it’s not the be-and-end-all of image SEO.