The Basics Of Using Alt Text For SEO

Alt text, also known as alt tag or alt description, refers to an HTML attribute that provides a textual description of the image on a web page. It allows the search engine crawlers to understand the context of the image and decide how it should be ranked for the most relevant searches. Though creating a unique alt tag may not give an immediate boost to the rankings, it is counted among the most important on-page SEO factors that contribute to your website’s presence in search engines.

Given here are some of the tips for using alt text to improve your website’s SEO performance:

  • Keep It Short: Ideally, alt tags should be brief and provide relevant information to the users. Do not use lengthy sentences or detailed description of the context of the image. Keep it as concise as possible, preferably within a character limit of 125. Alt tags that are too long may not be indexed properly. However, you must make sure that the alt tag is useful and provides sufficient details for the search engines to relate the image to the content of the web page.
  • Avoid Keyword Stuffing: Just like all other on-page elements, you must refrain from keyword stuffing in the alt text as well. It may get your website banned from search results. It is important that you use only the relevant keywords in a judicious manner to make the alt text look contextual to the image associated with it.
  • Keep It Consistent With The Page Title: Alt text offers you a convenient way to explain the context of a web page to the search engine bots. Therefore, you must keep the tag consistent with the page title. Include the same keywords and provide similar information in both the elements. For example, if a web page consists of an article reviewing the iPhone 7, the title can be ‘Apple iPhone 7 Review’ along with an image of the phone with alt text as ‘alt= “iPhone 7”’.
  • Write For The Users, Not Search Engines: Google appreciates content that is written with an intent to provide the required information to the users. Therefore, the alt text should be understandable and content-related. You must not use the same alt text for all images on a web page as it may be considered as spam by the search engine bots. Create a unique description for each image.

We, at Centex Technologies, provide result-oriented SEO solutions to the businesses in Atlanta, GA. For more information, you can call us at (404) 994 – 5074.

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