The importance of the ALT attribute

Have you ever searched for an image on Google images and ended up on the web page where it is published? Your answer is probably yes. If you have a website, you probably want users searching for images related to what you offer to end up on your site as well. The ALT attribute plays a key role in achieving this; find out why and how you can optimize it to position one of your images, and therefore your website, in Google images and other image search sections of other search engines.

What is the ALT attribute?

The ALT tag is an element that is included in the HTML code and started to be used to facilitate web browsing for those users who cannot see images well. The reason may be a visual defect that forces the use of screen readers or similar technologies that are not able to read images. The ALT text is the text included within this attribute that describes the content of the image.

In the world of SEO the ALT attribute is used to describe to search engines the content that an image has in order to rank it in their image search section and other SEO benefits.

Benefits of using the ALT tag

• The words in the ALT text help search engines provide context to understand what our content is about and show it to users searching for related content.
• A well-optimized ALT tag related to the content it is in can rank in Google images and generate extra organic traffic to your website.
• In the event that, for whatever reason, the image does not load correctly, the ALT tag will be displayed instead, indicating the content of the image to the user.

How to optimize my ALT text?

The ALT attribute is optimized by the ALT text that we insert in the attribute. Here are some tips on how to optimize it:

• It must be related to the content in which the image is placed, preferably using the primary keywords, secondary keywords or words similar to these that you have already assigned to your own content.
• Look for ALT image attributes to be brief, with a maximum of 8 words.
• Do not use accents, capital letters or hyphens.
• The ALT text must convey the same concept as the image it describes.

The HTML ALT attribute is considered one of the most underutilized SEO elements, since it is an invisible element for most users but visible to these engines. Don’t make the same mistake as other SEO’s, optimize the ALT attribute of your images!