What is alt tag/alt text?

Alt-text is an Alternative text used for images to describe the look and features of an image on a website.

This alt text also has other names like alt attributes, alt descriptions, alt tags.

Why is alt tag/alt text important for images?

Even though Image recognition technology has developed a lot over the years, still search engine crawlers can’t perceive the images on a site as humans do. So, Sometimes this search engine crawler’s interpretation may go wrong and your website may not rank or may rank for unintended keywords. 

So, SEO Analysts must adopt the practice of including names, titles, alt tags for images for better rankings in Image Searches, etc.

 Benefits of using alt text/alt tags in SEO

1. Attaching alt tags to images on a website helps visually impaired users use screen readers to better understand the features of an image on a webpage.
2. If the image takes more time than usual then an alt text provided for the image will be displayed to understand the image.
3. Images with Alt text give clear descriptions to search engine crawlers for better indexing. 
4. Adopting the best Image SEO Practices as mentioned below will be beneficial to overall SEO and also provides a greater user experience.

Best practices of using alt text, image file name, the Title tag.

• Give a relevant name to the image with a keyword and no spaces between the words.
• writing a relevant title
• Adding an alt text that describes the image shortly with a keyword 

How do I write good alt text?

1. Describe the image as specifically and shortly(within 125 characters) as possible to provide the text explanations of images for images who are unable to see them. 
2. Try to include your target keyword of the webpage in alt tags as a part of describing and providing overall context to the image.
3. Avoid keyword stuffing, add only keyword per image if possible. Don’t overdo it.
4. Avoid using the words like ‘image of’, ‘picture of’ etc in the alt text as ALT tags are considered as text versions to images by crawlers.
5. You can write longer descriptions for complex images if the image requires it.
6. Image used in submits buttons for website forms should be attached with an alt tag. Example: Sign up, Apply Now, Register Now, etc.

What does good alt text look like?

Take a look at Example of alt text:

Okay alt text: <img src=”man reading.png” alt=”man reading a book”>

Better alt text: <img src=”man reading.png” alt=”man reading a book against sunlight”>

Best alt text: <img src=”bird.png” alt=”person sitting and reading a book against sunset”>