There are many ways to tackle website optimization. One of the ways that a web page may be brought closer to perfection is to improve image optimization. This can be achieved by ensuring all images have the appropriate alt text.
Whether looking to improve SEO or enhance web page accessibility, alt text is still essential for many websites. In this article, we will help to define what alt text is and what strategies you can use to improve your own! Additionally, we will highlight why alt text is so important and provide you with some helpful tips and tricks for alt text.
What Is Alt Text?
Alternative text, often called “alt text” is descriptive text that explains the purpose and setting of a visual element when it cannot be displayed for some reason.
Alt text is typically found in the HTML code of an image. Such a text helps to describe the visual, its main elements, and the significance of that image on a website.
The role of alt text in marketing is mainly reflected in its ability to help search engines determine what a web image is about, improving the website’s SEO.
Today technology is becoming more and more effective at identifying what a picture represents. However, algorithms alone cannot comprehend what an image implies with the rest of the page, which is where alt text comes into play.
Key Takeaways
Alternative text, or alt text for short, is used to describe better images for search engines as well as users with visual impairments, making it an essential part of many websites;
Using alt text to describe complex images is an excellent way to provide additional context for users, improving the overall user experience as well as SEO at the same time;
Decorative images may not require alt text to be added to them. If the image in question is already being described on your web page, repeating the description in your alt text can reduce the quality of content.
How to Define Alt Text?
Alt text may be defined as the textual content that is used to describe the visual content on a website, thereby aiding website SEO and improving accessibility for users.
When writing alt text, it’s important to consider the types of users that may find it beneficial and accurately describe the visual.
For example, visually impaired users who use screen readers to consume and understand content can benefit greatly from a textual description of an image. Therefore, the task is to describe the message the image and the specific situation convey.
When writing alt text, it is crucial to keep the writing clear and concise and keep the explanations brief. Usually, only a few words are good enough, although a phrase or two could be helpful on rare occasions.
Examples of Effective Alt Text for Different Images
To illustrate how to create effective alt text for a variety of image types and audiences, consider the following comparison table:
| Image Type | Target Audience | Alt Text Purpose | Example of Alt Text | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product Images | Shoppers, visually impaired users | Describe the product, including key features | Red leather handbag with gold buckle | Helps users understand the product's appearance and key features |
| Infographics | Researchers, data analysts, students | Summarize the key data points and insights | Bar chart showing 2023 sales data by quarter, with Q2 as the highest | Provides a summary of the infographic's main data, useful for quick understanding |
| Decorative Images | General web users, visually impaired users | Indicate decorative nature or omit alt text | Decorative floral border or leave alt text empty | Indicates that the image is purely decorative and not essential to content |
| Graphs and Charts | Business professionals, students | Explain the data trends and highlights | Line graph showing the rise in stock prices of Company X from 2020 to 2023 | Describes the main trend shown in the graph, aiding in comprehension of data |
| Advertisements | Potential customers, visually impaired users | Describe the product/service being advertised | Ad for 20% off all summer clothing at Fashion Store | Provides the main message of the ad, ensuring it's accessible to all users |
| Educational Images | Students, educators, visually impaired users | Describe the educational content | Diagram of the water cycle showing evaporation, condensation, and precipitation | Conveys the key educational content, aiding in learning and understanding |
| Event Photos | Attendees, visually impaired users | Describe the event, including key moments and people | Photo of keynote speaker John Doe at the 2024 Marketing Conference | Identifies important individuals and moments from the event |
| Logos | Brand followers, visually impaired users | Identify the brand | Eacademy logo, with a book and and the letter "E" | Clearly identifies the brand, enhancing recognition and accessibility |
| Social Media Posts | Followers, visually impaired users | Describe the post’s content and context | Photo of a dog playing in the park with the caption 'Happy National Dog Day!' | Provides context and content of the social media post for better engagement |
| Art and Illustrations | Art enthusiasts, visually impaired users | Describe the artwork and its main elements | Abstract painting with bold blue and red strokes | Conveys the visual elements and style of the artwork, aiding appreciation |
Why Is Alt Text Important?
The primary benefit of having precise and thorough alt text would be increasing the accessibility of digital assets, like photographs, for individuals with impairments. Besides this, alt text ensures that each image contributes to a website’s SEO.
1. Enhances SEO
Alt text assists search engine crawlers in indexing and appropriately categorizing a website, thereby enhancing its visibility and accessibility. Properly indexed images contribute significantly to a site’s SEO performance.
2. Improves accessibility for diverse users
Including detailed alt text makes your website more accessible to individuals who rely on screen readers and other assistive technologies.
This practice ensures that all users, including those with visual impairments, can understand and appreciate the content of images, thereby fostering inclusivity and broadening your site’s reach.
3. Drives website traffic
By incorporating relevant alt text, images become more searchable and can attract more visitors to your website. This not only increases traffic but also offers a unique way to educate and engage your audience through visual content.
What Are The Best Alt Text Strategies?
If you want to improve the quality of your alt text, you’ve come to the right place. Take a closer look at some of the most applied practices when creating your alt descriptions.
1. Keep it short
One of the most important factors to consider is alt text length. When describing a specific piece of content on a web page, try to keep your alt text concise, ideally below 125 characters.
While screen readers can read longer alt text, keeping it short ensures clarity and improves the user experience for visually impaired users.
2. Describe immediately
Instead of starting your alt text with phrases such as “a picture of” or “an image of”, go right into the description. Screen readers, as well as Google can identify that the text relates to an image, so repeating that fact is superfluous.
Here is an example of alt text usage:
Incorrect: A picture of a person holding a laptop and smiling.
Correct: Person holding a laptop and smiling.
3. Incorporate action-oriented language
When appropriate, use action-oriented language in your alt text to make descriptions more dynamic and engaging.
This approach can help convey the action or emotion depicted in the image, which enhances the context for all users, especially those using screen readers.
For example, instead of writing “Person with a laptop,” you could write “Person typing on a laptop with a smile.” This turns a simple image description into a more vivid and relatable piece of content.
4. Evaluate each image
Not every image on a website requires alt text to be added to it. Although adding it to most of the pictures on a web page is important for SEO, some photos or graphs are purely decorative. For example, a stock photo used solely for visual appeal does not need alt text.
In addition, if you are describing an image on your web page already, repeating the description in the alt text is counterproductive. For example, if you have a paragraph explaining a chart, you do not need to repeat the chart’s description in the alt text.
5. Avoid keyword stuffing pitfalls
While alt text is crucial for SEO, it’s important to use it ethically and effectively by avoiding keyword stuffing.
Search engines penalize this practice as it is considered both unproductive for SEO enhancement and unethical, leading to poorer user experience and potential demotion in search rankings.
Additional Tips & Tricks
- Keep the alt tags in the image description flow with the rest of your article or text on the web page. Users who use screen readers will thank you;
- Informative images, in particular, can benefit from alt tags. Alternative text can help both search engines and users better interpret the content of the complex image in question;
- Creating effective alt text may improve image SEO, driving additional traffic to your web page through simple image alt descriptions.
The Bottom Line
Alt text provides a concise and precise description of images on websites, aiding search engines in understanding their content. These brief descriptions, known as image alt tags, are crucial for enhancing the overall user experience.
Now that you understand what alt text is, its importance, and effective strategies for its use, along with some practical tips, you can decide whether incorporating alt text is the right website optimization strategy for your company or organization.
Alt text FAQs
To put it simply, yes. An alt attribute, alternative text, alt text, and alt tags are all ways to refer to the textual description of specific image content.
People with vision problems frequently utilize screen readers as assistive technology. Text, buttons, graphics, as well as other screen elements are all translated into voice or braille.
Good alt text differs from image to image, but in general, there are certain features that it will contain. For example, good alt text is generally very brief and precise, and it effectively conveys the content of an image, in some cases even adding more useful information to it.
