What is Alt Text?
The alt attribute, also known as alt text, alternative text, or alt tag, helps search engines understand the content of an image and improves website accessibility. This short description helps inform crawlers and people with poor eyesight who rely on screen readers to access websites. Alt text on web pages enhances accessibility and SEO by providing descriptive text for images, making web content accessible to visitors using assistive technology or text-only browsers. Alt attributes should describe the image accurately and concisely, usually in a few words.
Search engine bots use alt text to interpret images when crawling, indexing, and ranking a site. They should be relevant to the page’s topic, keyword rich and descriptive for human users. Alt tags give context to an image’s content and can often help boost rankings for specific keywords in image searches. Alt tags can also be used to reduce page load times when they are set up correctly.
ALT text examples?
Image ALT (alternate text) is supposed to be a descriptive phrase describing an image on a website. Examples of images:
- A chef cooking a meal in the kitchen – ALT: Chef cooking a meal in the commercial kitchen
This ALT text provides a meaningful image description to search engines and users who rely on assistive technology ( AT ), like website readers. ALT text should be keyword-rich, descriptive, and relevant to the page’s topic to improve the rankings for specific keywords in image searches. When set up correctly, alt tags can also help reduce page load times. Additionally, alt text helps describe the image when the image file fails to load, preventing screen readers from reading the image file name.
Decorative images, which are used solely for layout purposes, should have a null (empty) alt attribute or be handled using CSS.
How do you write alt text for SEO?
Writing Alt tags for SEO requires careful consideration, and writing alt text is a crucial part of this process.
- Alt text must inform search engines and users who rely on screen readers about the image’s content. They should be descriptive and keyword-rich, providing context around the image to which they are applied.
- Alt tags should also be relevant to the page’s topic and help boost rankings for specific keywords in image searches. Avoid keyword stuffing in the alt text.
- Alt tags should ideally be between 50-125 characters and include as many relevant words as possible. Using modifiers such as adjectives, adverbs, and specific noun descriptions can help create more effective.
- Alt tags provide further details on what is depicted in the image.
Does ALT help in SEO?
Yes, alt text can help with SEO by providing a short description of an image to search engines. Alt text improves the SEO of the entire web page by giving search engines context. To be effective for SEO, alt tags should be descriptive, keyword-rich, and relevant to the page’s topic.
Alt tags give context to an image’s content, inform search engine crawlers of the image’s contents, and can often help boost rankings for specific keywords in image searches. Alt attributes can also reduce page load times when set up correctly.
What is the relation between the Alt attribute and WCAG?
The alt attribute is a critical component of web accessibility and is essential for helping visually impaired people who rely on assistive technology ( AT ), like readers, access content. The alt attribute is outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, which provides an international standard for making websites accessible to those with disabilities.
Alt text should provide an alternative that accurately and concisely describes the image, its purpose, and its relationship to the page’s content.
Optimized Alt text should be keyword-rich (but avoid keyword stuffing), descriptive, and relevant to the page’s topic to improve SEO rankings and web accessibility for people with disabilities. Alt tags should aim for 50-125 characters and include as many relevant words as possible. Additionally, when set up correctly, alt tags can help reduce page load times. Therefore, alt text is integral to website accessibility and SEO optimization.
Does the Alt attribute help with image rankings?
Yes, Alt attributes can play an important role in image rankings. Alt tags provide context to an image’s content and help inform search engine crawlers of what the image is about. Alt attributes are placed within the image tag in HTML to describe the image content. As Alt tags are keyword-rich, they can boost rankings for specific keywords in image searches.
Alt text must also be relevant to the page’s topic to be effective for SEO and provide a descriptive text alternative. They have become increasingly important for SEO optimization and web accessibility purposes, making them a crucial element of website design.
What is the difference between the ALT text and the image caption?
The Alt attribute and image caption are essential to web design elements and should be included in all images. Alt tags provide a text alternative for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers and search engine crawlers to understand what an image is about.
Alt text should be descriptive, keyword-rich, and relevant to the page’s topic. On the other hand, image captions are typically used to provide additional information about an image that goes beyond Alt tags. While Alt tags may include short descriptions, captions can provide more detailed and contextual information about the image, which is unrelated to SEO optimization.
Additionally, Alt attributes are designed to be read by search engines and screen reading tools, while captions are intended for human consumption. Alt attributes and captions should complement each other to ensure the best accessibility experience and the highest SEO ranking possible.
Why is Image Alt Text Important?
ALT Text is crucial in website accessibility and search engine optimisation (SEO). For individuals who use screen reading tools due to visual impairments, Alt Text provides a textual description of an image, allowing these users to understand content they cannot see.
Additionally, alt text provides information when an image fails to load on a webpage. This inclusivity enhances the user experience and aligns with web accessibility standards, making websites more open and usable for everyone.
From an SEO perspective, alt text helps search engines understand the content of important images. Search engines can’t “see” images as humans do; instead, they rely on textual cues like alt text to interpret what an image represents. Including relevant keywords in alt text can improve a website’s ranking for those terms, driving more traffic through image search results. Alt text can also be a part of an effective SEO strategy.
Moreover, well-crafted Alt Text can contribute to a page’s overall context and relevance, boosting its visibility in search results. Image Alt Text is indispensable for creating accessible content and optimizing a website’s performance in search engines.