Image ALT Tags and SEO
There are many different techniques you can use to optimize SEO of your web pages. One of those is using the image ALT tags. Every image or photo that you place on your web page has a place for you to enter a few lines of descriptive text. This is one SEO strategy you do not want to overlook.
The ALT attribute was designed for you to enter text telling your site visitors what your graphic is about in case it did not load or they had images turned off. That way, if someone can’t see your image, they can read a few lines of text that tells them what the image is about.
The importance of this is that different browsers display things differently, which is especially true today with the prevalence of mobile web browsing. Additionally, sometimes image files get corrupted or called incorrectly and in other cases people who cannot see use aural browsers that read the page to them.
Therefore using ALT tags for your images should already be one of the best practices that you follow with your website, ensuring that it’s accessible for every person and in all situations. However, for the person interested in SEO you can make use of the ALT attribute to provide additional benefits.
When you enter text into the ALT tag, be sure to include your keyword phrases to give your site a boost with the engines. Most people will never even see your ALT image text since it is only displayed when the images don’t load. The search engines will pick up on them though and use them to help your site rank for search results.
The ALT tags provide a way for you to add more keyword phrases to your web pages without resorting to keyword stuffing or making your site look spammy. Because they are not part of your page content, the extra keywords don’t work against you. That’s why using these image tags should be an important part of your SEO strategy.
Adding the right keywords to your images has another benefit as well. This allows your images to appear in the results on sites like Google’s image search. When someone is searching for images related to your keyword, your image will appear in the results.
In this way you can continue to grow your online presence. You will actually be able to drive more traffic to your website as a result of these image searches. People will see a displayed image for a particular search, and either want to see the full size version or want to learn more about its usage and the website that has it.
Using ALT image tags benefits both you and your site visitors. They will still get your message even if your images do not load. You will enjoy the additional search engine listings and SEO benefits that using image ALT tags brings. That is why you should make this technique an essential part of your SEO strategy.
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