Alt text can be defined as an extract of a piece of information given to narrate what is inside an image. Alt text can be commonly called as alt description, alt attribute or alt tag. Originally, the concept of alt text was developed to help the specially abled people with visual defects. With the help of alt text, screen reader conveys the image text to them thus improving the website’s visitors experience.
Moreover, alt text enables the images to be equally recognized and cherished by various search engines when analyzing content about the user’s research keyword.
Sometimes alt text plays a very crucial role when an image doesn’t get loaded due to poor internet connectivity or other reasons. So in that case, the user through the image caption can come to know what the particular image is all about.
Impact of alt text on images and website SEO writing
- Alt text on images is one of the important factors influencing the website’s ranking on a search engine.
- It provides a snapshot or a caption describing what an image needs to exhibit thus helping researchers conclude the image in a positive manner.
- The absence of alt text on images and websites can give a poorer browsing experience to the users which can lead to a significant decline in the browsing history.
- Keeping the social and ethical responsibility in mind, alt text helps the visually impaired person to access your content and recommendations within the similar category.
So in order to have a high ranking in search engines make sure your content is easily accessible and available to all the categories of society and alt text for images and websites for the narrative captions of the images.
Know about writing good alt tags.
When you are writing alt text, do write it solely for SEO purposes. Remember for whom, alt text was first discovered? Yes, write for them. Make it simple and informative. Just 3-4 words that can be easy to understand by a common man. Make the captions with good readability and easy narration. It will reflect the positive impact of using ALT text for images.
Examples of good and bad alt text
- Bad alt text: sleeping; good alt text: a man sleeping under a tree
- Bad alt text: a crying girl; Good alt text: A girl is crying because her mother scolded her.
- Bad alt text: World Cup; good alt text: India has won the T20 World Cup
How to write the best alt text
- Writing alt text to images that are correctly designed. Adding alt text to non information giving images can misguide people with visual defects thus impacting browsing history.
- Write alt text to images that narrates the whole image but on the other hand Is very concise and short.
- Try to include not more than 4 keywords while writing alt text to images but a minimum 1 keyword is required to rank your content on a search engine.
Process to add alt text to images
If you want to add alt text to your images you don’t need to have any particular qualification or a web developer. Many content management systems give this privilege to add your alt text to images while uploading your content.
