As we know, people are visual thus it is important to include images on our websites. Images show consumers what the product is or gives a description of the products or services. Creating a user friendly website with spaces headings and images will likely keep the consumer on your website longer, which is the idea. Pictures help explain the full story.
Camera to computer
When was the last time you downloaded pictures from your camera to you computer? Typically when you download them, they are given dates or numbers as their name followed by the type of file – like 1234.jpg or 100114.jpg. By looking at those two files, you have no idea what the picture is unless you see it. Think about that when you upload a picture to your computer and you don’t rename your pictures. Search engines won’t have any idea about what that picture is about.
What are alt tags?
Alt tags, alternative tags” are part of coding on the back end that typically aren’t seen by the end user. They are meant to describe images to people who can’t see in which it is read for them or displays this alternative text, for when the image doesn’t load on a page and shows the alternative text and for search engines to read the picture. Are you seeing where I am going with this? Alt tags are another important tag for search engine optimization.
Side note: Depending on the browser you are using, sometimes an alt tag can show when hovering over the picture like a screen tip. This hover/screen tip is more commonly seen as a title tag within the image code, not to be confused with the title of the page, or the title tag within a link coding. See an example in the above link where ‘alt tags are another important tag for search engine optimization’.
Best practice for images and alt tags
When downloading pictures from your camera that you know you will be using elsewhere, spend the extra time to name and organize them. You may want to organize pictures by date and/or category or event. Once you determine how you want to organize them, it is suggested to rename them to what the picture includes. This is ideal in that it will make it easier to search your computer for them later than to try to remember the date or the picture number, right?
Then, once you upload the images, depending on what platform your website it is on, add the alt tag to your image as well. Within WordPress, once you upload the image and before inserting it into the post, you have several options. Those several images are the title of the image (which is what the image was named), caption (which would show under the image on your website), alt text (there it is!) and some display settings.
You can always add it to the html code on your site if you are geek enough. Lol Easiest thing to do in the code is to do a search for “img” or what you named the picture like 1234.jpg and find the one you wanted to add alt tags to.
What it looks like in code
This may be what it looks like if you just uploaded it after downloading it to your camera.
<img src=”1234.jpg”>
This is what it may look like after you have organized your photos and added an alternative “alt” tag.
<img src=”Kristen on her Honda VTX100.jpg” alt=”This is Kristen cruising down the freeway on her Honda VTX1300” />
How best to utilize the alt tag for SEO?
Quite simply, name your picture files and add alt tags to all pictures. You will want to name the picture appropriately and not stuff keywords in the alt tags however most likely you will add images that are relevant to the page and to your general keywords. If you have a website about dogs, surely you won’t be writing a blog about horses. Similarly, you will be writing blogs and content about dogs and when uploading pictures, your keywords will fit naturally into the alt tags. The key is to be natural and not stuff keywords but also relevant.
This was more of a short and sweet post but hopefully helped you to understand more aspects of one bit of code and search engine optimization. Should you have any questions about SEO and how it can improve your website rankings, feel free to check out some of my SEO blogs or contact me with any questions you may have.
~Kristen
This was such a great explanation on the topic. My partner.daughter does all our product photography and updates and I know it took her awhile to learn this. I, though am taking some of my own images for Instagram and create graphics for blogs and havent known this. I think its really important so I pinned info to 2 boards for reference. And Im bookmarking it. Thanks
That’s great Roslyn, glad that you have found value and to save it for later. Thanks!
Thanks so much, Kristen. I usually name the photo and put in a caption, but have never used the alt tag. So a good alt tag would be a keyword? Also thanks for telling me where to find it. I would be looking for it all over the place!
Well, it is an “alternative” to the image name, but a great opportunity to add in a description with keyword. You are welcome, figured it would be best to explain how to find it. 😉
Good summary of organizing images with SEO in mind.
Thanks Beth… hope you are able to apply these techniques to your website.
It definitely works, i have been doing this for most of this year and my images show up on google now. Thanks for sharing this, it will help lots of people.
Thanks for sharing that Sonya.. glad it works well for you!!
Great reminder that SEO is important for images too. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Vicky.. so true.. one of those voodoo magic things to help get better rankings with search engines.
Unless I’m loading a photo from my phone directly to my personal Facebook page, I’ll always rename my pictures before I post them on my business social media accounts. I’ve gotten a lot better at coming up with the alt tags…it takes a while to get your head into the whole idea of “what are people searching for”? Because that’s what your alt tags should be about. Great info, as usual, Kristen.
Thanks Jackie. True.. I have to remind myself that it needs to be what the picture is about, using keywords but not be spammy and not too long… not too easy! lol
Thank you for this information. I learned something new about alt tags. I agree that we need to use more photos. It is so key.