What does well-optimized alt text look like in practice? Let’s write a few examples of bad, good, better, and best options. Now that we’ve covered what to avoid, let’s dive into a few more examples. And even signal to Google that your page is spam. Optimized alt text can help Google understand the context of your visuals, but “keyword stuffing” like this can create a poor user experience. The spammy example attempts to fit in a few too many related keywords that don’t do much to describe the image. The descriptive example simply describes the image in a detailed way. Bean brown leather hiking walking winter duck boots
It’s also helpful to include relevant keywords in your alt text, but there’s a fine line between being specific and being spammy. This is because most screen readers (assistive technologies to help those who are visually impaired) stop reading alt text after 125 characters. Generally, it’s best to stick to a maximum of 125 characters when writing alt text.
Imagine you’re on the phone with someone and need to explain how an image looks-how would you best describe it? When adding alt text, it’s best to be descriptive without overdoing it.
#Optimize images for google image search how to
First, let’s dig into writing good alt text and learning how to assign alt text to your images.
#Optimize images for google image search code
This helps Google better understand the context of an image to determine how to rank the page.Īlt text is used within HTML code to describe specific images on a page.īut don’t worry: you don’t have to know HTML to optimize your alt tags. You can see how an image looks when it loads correctly, when it’s broken and has no alt text, and when it’s broken but has alt text:Īlt text can help improve your site's SEO performance by adding further relevancy signals to a webpage.
Take a look at this example from the University of Dayton. It can also contribute to your site’s accessibility for users, as well as explain to users what an image should show if an image is broken. That’s because alt text lets you tell Google what the image shows. Optimized alt text is crucial in getting Google to rank your images on Google Images. SEOs sometimes refer to alt text as “alt attributes” or “alt tags.” What Is Alt Text?Īlt text (or alternative text) is a written description of an image. Now let’s talk about one of the most important parts of image SEO: alt text. There are few things less engaging than a solid block of a couple of thousand words. And help break up otherwise large blocks of text. In addition, images can help users understand and engage with your written content. Like the results for the keyword “blue ford raptor” below-notice how many images show up before the first website link. Google is increasingly showing images in the regular search results, often above the usual organic results. Second, images are an important part of on-page SEO. Image SEO can drive significant traffic to your site in two different ways:įirst, using optimized images increases the chance of ranking in Google Images. This is why it’s crucial to pay attention to your Image SEO-you’ll be missing out on a huge amount of traffic if you don’t. Google Image searches account for 22.6% of all searches. And then, we’ll discuss actionable tips you can use on your own webpages. Let’s dive into why image SEO optimization is important. In this article, we’ll show you how to add alt text, reduce image file size for optimal load times, take advantage of structured image data, and more. Image SEO can also improve accessibility on your site, which is becoming a legal requirement in many countries. Image SEO refers to the optimization of images to get more traffic from search engines.įor example, optimizing for image SEO can help your site rank higher on Google Images.Īs you can see below, Semrush ranks second in Google Images for “ecommerce keyword research tool:”