Are you missing an important tool in the quest for search engine success?
If you are using images in your blog (and you should be), they can help your blog’s search rankings. But if you aren’t making use of the Alternate Text box for each image, your images aren’t helping your site’s rankings.
Using Alternate Text, or Alt Text, with your uploaded images helps search engines more effectively index your blog. Search engines cannot “see” photographs or graphics, which means they cannot be indexed and included in search results.
When you add an image to your WordPress blog, you get this box.
For SEO, the most important parts of this box are the File Name, the “Title” and “Alternate Text.” The first step begins before you upload your image. Give your image a descriptive file name. If it’s a photograph it probably has a name like “IMG3456” or if you have some sort of cataloguing system or are using a stock graphic it might have a name like “DIS1011.” That’s great for being organized and lousy for SEO.
Before I uploaded this image, I renamed it “epcot-at-twilight.” A descriptive name helps search engines to classify it in searches. Searchers may look for “epcot at twilight” or even “epcot” but they aren’t likely to look for “3456.”
WordPress automatically puts your file name in the Title Box. When a reader mouses over your image in the post, this is the text that will show up. You can change the title if you wish, but the file name is not changeable.
Next is the Alternate Text box. If your images don’t load for some reason, this is the text that will show up in their place. Alt Text should be descriptive and relate to both the image and the post. My Alt Text for this image is “Epcot at Twilight, Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida.” All of the text relates to the image and helps Google to know the subject of this image. Using just “Epcot” would also work, but the text should be as informative and descriptive as possible. Especially if your blog or post are image-heavy, like a photography or travel blog.
Avoid “keyword stuffing”, which can cause a search engine to decide your site is spam and maybe drop it completely. An example of keyword stuffing for this image would be “Epcot at twilight, Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida, Disney, resort, twilight, Disney Parks, sunset, Mickey Mouse, theme parks, Disney Resorts, Orlando tourist attraction, Walt Disney.”
In addition to using alt tags, make sure the text on your page relates to the images and gives them context. If your blog is image-heavy, include descriptive text in the body of your post that incorporates your keywords naturally. Combining relevant text with relevant Alt Text helps increase your blog’s search engine rankings to increase traffic and readers.
If you haven’t done this in the past, start doing it now and see how it helps your blog. And as time permits, you can go back and add Alt Text to previously posted images to improve your blog’s rankings.
Have you done this on your blog? Do you have any questions about Alt Texts or using images on your blog. Please share any comments or questions in the comment section below and I will answer them for you.
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Thank you agin for this clear helpful information! I really do lern something new everyday!
Marie, this is an excellent post on alt tags. I really appreciate how you lay out images showing how to actually do it! I had been wondering how the name you saw when you mouse over an image was decided, so thanks for explaining. . .I am going to look at the file names of future images that I upload to my blog. Thank you!
You are most welcome, Sherie. I’m glad this post was helpful for you and hopefully it will help boost your blog a bit as well.
Thanks Marie, great advice. I always wondered if I was doing this right and you’ve clued me in to something that will help me even more!
Wonderful. It’s amazing how the seemingly small things add up to such a big difference.
Hi Marie,
I had put in keywords in image properties before uploading them to my blog in about 15 posts each in Feb and March and I found that it brought me a lot of traffic, more so from Google image search. But now after a few months, the traffic from Google image search has dwindled and I even get more traffic from Bing which was just a small percentage earlier. My unique visitors per day has dwindled from over 200 per day to even as less as 50 per day. And when I search for certain keywords in google image search for those images that I ranked first for earlier are nowhere in sight now. Look forward to your reply.
That’s a very helpful post! I had no idea that the alt text box was that important! Thank you for sharing the info.
It can definitely give you a boost in the search rankings, Daphnee, and we can all use all the help we can get.
Thanks much! This exactly the guidance I needed.
You are most welcome. So glad it was helpful for you.
Thank you very much for your advice 🙂
Thanks for the tip! I was wondering why some photos showed up and others weren’t. I’ll definitely begin to make use of Alt Text here no out.
Thanks again and God bless!
-Swanky
You are most welcome. So glad I could help you out!
I’ve heard for food blogs that we should be putting “the best” in front of the name of every recipe in the alt text box. Is that true? I don’t want to be looked at as spam by google! I don’t know if that’s what you meant by keyboard stuffing.
I suppose you could do that but I personally think it’s a waste of time. I’ve not heard of that and it doesn’t seem to me it’s going to do anything for your search engine rankings. I have heard that you should put your best image first in the post, which makes sense, because that’s the one most often picked up by Google in search results and having a mouth-watering picture never hurts on a recipe blog.
I really hate that I’ve read this info so late. I’m over 700 posts in and cannot change the filenames and did not add alt tags or titles. What would you recommend as a quick fix for previous posts?
There may be a plugin that can help you with that. We may need to do a little research, as I’m sure you’re not the only one with this problem.