Images are becoming a very key feature when it comes to blogging and well, anything involving the internet and communications. To be honest, they always have been, but are you doing enough to your photos to make them earn SEO for you?
If you use any kind of SEO specific plugin for your WordPress website (or Piggyback Blog), then you know that deep within those plugins, you’re being graded on how well your post or page is going to be for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Specifically with WordPress SEO by Yoast, when you visit the Page Analysis section, you can get flagged for at least two things involving images. One of being that your post/page doesn’t include an image at all and secondly that you do not have alt text on the image that includes your “keyword.” Now, I’ll touch on keywords in a later blog post, but let’s discuss what “alt text” is first.
For every image you upload to WordPress, you’re able to set specific information. This information includes the following:
- Image name – This is what your image was named when you uploaded it.
- Title – How you want your image to be titled when someone clicks to “view” it
- Caption – This is the text that will show up either on or below the image for your readers.
- Alt Text – Text that will not necessarily be shown until the image can not be shown, but will be seen by search engines and other computers.
- Description -A description of your photo that will allow you to find it more easily through media library searching.
So, why’s ALT text so important for SEO?
Search engines can’t see images on websites. Even if an image has text embedded within it, search engines are unable to crawl (read and understand) that text. So by not creating alt attributes for each and every image on your site, you lose a huge opportunity to be as visible as possible online.
Other things to consider when creating your alt text:
- Keep it simple
- Be descriptive
- Be true to your image (don’t try to trick the search engines)
- Use your keywords