Understanding the Image Alt Attribute For SEO - Paragon Themes
Understanding the Image Alt Attribute For SEO

When adding images to your WordPress website, you need to take care of the image alt attribute. Why, you ask? It is an important metric used by search engines and contributes to your SEO. If you’re just getting started with WordPress, have chosen a theme, and adding images to your post, then here’s a definitive guide on properly using the image title attribute WordPress for SEO purposes.

What are Image Alt Attributes?

Alt attribute, also known as Alt text, stands for Alternative Attribute. The text is not used by human readers on your site but rather by “alternative” sources. These can be blind people who are accessing your website using a computer program that reads the content of your website for them. 

When accessing your image, the program will read out the text contained within the alt text. If it’s absent, then the computer program and, ultimately, the blind user wouldn’t necessarily know what the image is about.

You can view the image alt attribute by disabling image loading on your website. Instead of the image, you’ll see a text, and this is the image alt text or image alt attribute. For instance, try loading Boom Casino Review and disable the images. You will find the alt text next to each image. 

As per W3C accessibility guidelines, every web publisher should make his website accessible to the users who use screen readers.

Not only to blind users, but alt attributes also benefit regular web visitors and search engines like Google. (More on this in the next section)

Alt Text vs. Image Title Tag

Alt text is often used interchangeably with an alt tag, but they are two separate things. You’ve already learned about image alt text. Image text is also used to describe an image, but not for the purpose that alt texts serve. Screen readers won’t gather this information for blind readers.

Image text is the text that you get to see when you hover over an image. If there is no image text provided, then you won’t see any HTML title attribute when you hover over that image.

WordPress image title attribute is usually more descriptive than image alt text. You can provide contextual information rather than descriptive. 

The W3C Accessibility guidelines using both alt text and image title tag to make the website more reader-friendly and W3C-valid.

Why Use Image Alt Attribute?

Using the image alt attribute is important for various reasons.

First and foremost, it makes your website disability-friendly. People with a lack of vision can easily read through your website and get the required information they’re looking for. Without the image alt attribute, they might miss certain useful information. As per estimates, almost 70% of the internet remains inaccessible to visually impaired users. You can change this figure and make your website accessible to them.

The second use of image alt attributes is when the internet speed is terribly slow. When internet speed is slow, images do not load appropriately or may not even load at all. So if an image fails to load, the alt text can serve as a replacement. Users will read through this text and understand what the image is about. This is also useful for people who, for whatever reasons, have disabled the images on their browser.

Alt Attribute Importance for SEO

An image alt attribute is highly important for SEO purposes. Search engines like Google and Bing do not understand images and their content. Like visually impaired and blind people, search engines rely on the alt text to understand the images.

 They look for keywords and contexts to grasp the image and its content. So, by optimizing alt texts, you are also optimizing for search engines. This directly means higher rankings in the SERPs – although it is not a direct ranking factor.

Also, providing appropriate alt text will keep your web visitors engaged for a longer duration, which will bring down the bounce rate. This is a direct ranking factor that greatly impacts your SEO score.

The WordPress image description is usually not that important from an SEO standpoint, but it’s a good practice to optimize for both.

Setting up Alt Attribute for Images in WordPress

Now that you understand the importance of image alt attributes, you should go ahead and implement them on your website. If you’re using WordPress, then it’s as easy as it can get. Just follow the steps mentioned below.

  • Go to the Images library and select the image you want to add the Alt attribute for.
  • In the Image Details section, look for fields like Caption, Alternative Text, Display Setting, and Advanced Options.
  • Provide the alt text in the Alternative Text section. There is usually a limit of 500 words or so but just check for the limit.

Since the aim of alt text is to describe the images, you need to write accordingly. Write short, clear, and crisp. Do incorporate target keywords for added SEO benefits.

That’s it. Now you have an alt text on your website for your image. You can confirm this by opening the source code and navigating to the <image> tab. Look for the “alt=’’” section. This is the alternative text of the image. Similarly, you can add alt text for every image on your website.

The Wrap Up

The Internet is an ever-evolving field. With the adoption of smart assistants like Siri and Amazon Echo, people are consuming more and more content through these assistants rather than reading themselves. And that seems to be the future. Therefore, you should make every possible effort to keep pace with the changing technological landscape.

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