Importance of Image Alt attribute for SEO

 Image Alt Attribute

Images are become a important part on the web they are used for various purposes on the web. Graphics are used on a website for navigational buttons, bullet points, icons, text graphics, logos, banners or other ways to supplement the text.

Images have a  image alt attribute (in HTML) to describe the image in readable text format.  It helps in these situations where people or bots(Search Engine bots) cannot interpret the image content. The following is an example of the image alt attribute:

<img src=“survivor.jpg” alt=“survive for life”/>   

Image alt attribute is certainly significant for usability and it also helps for SEO. It serves the users mentioned above with enriched website usability and also returns images in relevant search results due to enhanced site SEO.

Example: this image is showing how this CFL(Lighting Bulb) is Surviving.

 Some important factors that help to optimize your images for SEO.

• Use images in these formats – JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF,  PNG.
• Image file name should be descriptive and should not a generic name, such as DCSC1258.jpg.
• Search Engine crawlers usually index images of all sizes but keeping the file size within a certain limit will help your pages load faster.
• Important text should not be embedded in the image itself. It must be kept in regular HTML.
• Specify the height and width of an image. This allows the browser to know the size of the image and it ensures that the space reserved for the image. 

<img src=“survivor.jpg” alt=“Survive for life”  width=“620” height=“1872”>

Tips For Your Alt Text Content:

• An image alt attribute must contain a sentence(6 to 10 words) that describes the image.

Following are the examples:

 <img src=“Survivor.jpg” alt=“”> : Wrong  Use

         <img src=“Survivor.jpg” alt=“Survivor”> : Average Use

<img src=“survivor.jpg” alt=“survive for life”/> : Rright Use

• Image alt attribute must contain keywords, but in a readable format.

• If you have multiple images of the same category of products, such as survivor, try and differentiate the alt text of each image by specifying the type of the product. Avoid repeating the same alt attribute for all images on a page.
• Use ‘Company Logo’ for your website’s logo image alt text
• HTML for images contains title tags and alt tags that are often confused with each other. While title tag content is for human readers, the alt attribute is for search engine crawlers. Hence, title text can be written to direct a reader.
•  If you have a text image in a specific font style, use the same word/words as its alt attribute.

• Use the null alt attribute for spacer images. These images are meant to be invisible and used to create space in the web layout. It is advised to use the null alt attribute rather than not using an alt attribute at all for these spacer images. Null alt attribute is declared in the following format:

                 <img src=“filename.jpg” alt=“”>

• Use null alt attribute for bullets, icons and decorative images. Ideally you can include bullet and icon images in your site’s CSS, this will remove the need for alt description completely.

Tips for SEO:

• Google tries to understand the content of the images by the text and keywords surrounding it. Therefore, ensure you place your images where they are relevant to the site content.
• Google also tries to interpret the content of the image by the anchor text to which it is linked. For instance, if your site’s image is linked by the anchor text ‘Survivor for Life’, then that image is optimized for searches.
• The page title (where the image is found) is also considered by Google search engine crawlers.
• It is always better to use alt attribute in all the above forms rather than not at all. Search engines can index your images much better with the alt attribute and you can gain search traffic to your site simply by assigning appropriate alt text to your images.
• By enhancing the usability of your site you enrich the user experience and that indirectly improves your site’s SEO. Thus, ultimately with the proper use of image alt attribute you positively affect search engine rankings of your site.