Alt Tags for Better Rankings

When mousing over an image you might notice a very small pop-up with text describing the image. This is called an Alt Tag; and along with a descriptive file name it will help search engines understand what the image is about. Remember, search engines do not have eyes and therefore can not see images.

Alt tags that describe the image…

A picture is worth a thousand words but in the case of Alt Tags that is not so. Alt Tags are meant to be short, simple and cleverly defines what the image is about. For example, let’s say we had a picture of the Blue Heron. The Alt Tag could be “Blue Heron lands on local farmland”. This should please visitors along with search engines.

File names that make sense…

Have you noticed the file names when taking photographs with a digital camera? They can be very unhelpful when they are labeled such as DSC029332.jpg or img_03.jpg. If the photographs were about a type of bird wouldn’t yellow-headed-blackbirds.jpg be more appealing; I would think so!

Alt tags for the visually impaired…

How do the visually impaired move about the web without being able to see images? They use assisted software, or text-to-speech software, to read and navigate from site to site. Writing quality ALT Tags will benefit your visitors who are visually impaired.

Conclusion:

Clever and interesting ALT Tags along with file names are great for search engine optimization and accessibility.