Alt attribute: Tips for image ranking

February 07, 2023 - Anaïs Sautarel
SEO
8224 views

4 minutes

Your website is the main showcase of your business or brand. The creation of a well-ranked website has become challenging.

Your website shows your business professionalism. It is also a landmark for your potential and current customers.

As you probably know, paying attention to your website content is essential. Images or visual elements are often used on websites to grab internet users’ attention.

A study has shown that internet users remain focused 8 seconds at the most. Grabbing your visitors’ attention with images may be a good solution. To improve even more your content and SEO, it will be necessary to write your Alt attributes correctly to enable Google to understand your images and rank them high.

Let’s discover the best tips to rank your images.

What is an Alt tag?

An Alt tag refers to the text of your image or visual element on a website. This attribute describes the content of your image.

The Alt tag (also known as Alt attribute) is for describing your image. It is necessary for natural SEO as it enables search engines to identify the content of your image or visual element. If you optimize your tags, Google understands that the image is relevant and a logical consequence of your keywords.

Alt tag

Impact of the Alt tag on SEO

The Alt attribute is essential for natural SEO. However, so that the Alt tag has a positive impact on your SEO, you need to write it correctly and follow a few tips.

Search engines can’t read image content. However, they will read the keywords in alternative text. Alternative text corresponds to the Alt tag that will position the image in search engines.

To improve your SEO, the Alt tag achieves several objectives:

  • More visibility: The Alt tag offers more visibility to your image, and all your website images.

  • Better access: Our images can bring more traffic to your website. If you use Alt tags, they can offer better access to your website.

  • Ranking improvement: The Alt tag enables you to enhance your Google ranking. Google can understand a page context thanks to its content. However, Google can’t read an image. That’s why it’s essential to write your Alt attribute so that your images are considered in your Google ranking.

The best tips to rank your images

To enjoy the best Alt attribute that improves your image ranking, here are 6 tips to rank your images. They are easy to follow and will have a huge impact on your ranking.

Google uses the name of your files to rank your images. That’s why you must correctly name your files. The name of your file must have keywords related to your image.

Watch out
Info warning
Avoid spaces, accents, as well as special characters.

Opt for a short description for the name of your file.

Thus, you can add keywords to the name of your file. However, remember to add dashes between keywords for better understanding.

Alt attribute

Image weight must be taken into account. It plays an important role when you choose image format, especially for your website.

In most cases, you’ll be able to choose between these two types of formats: JPEG or PNG.

  • JPEG for photos. It can be compressed to get a small file. File size is essential for the loading speed of your pages.

  • PNG will enable you to keep a transparent background. It’ll be perfect for your logo or infographics.

Place your image correctly. Your image must be next to the related text. It helps lectors to view and understand your topic.

Optimizing the placement of your images also covers your text and makes lectors’ reading easier.

Search engines can’t see contents written in visual elements.

So, avoid writing texts in images, but write them directly on the page to improve your website accessibility.

Remember that your image must just complete your texts.

The main objective of an Alt tag is to enable you to describe your image.

Write a precise description, as the goal is to describe the image and its function.

Your image must rank on Google and enable internet users who can’t see your image to imagine it.

You don’t need to write a long or studied description. A few characters are enough.

As seen before, the Alt tag plays an important role in your image SEO, but your images can also bring traffic to your website. That’s why it’s essential to insert the keyword on which you want to rank into your attribute.

SiteW Image block

Embed Alt tags in SiteW

Embedding your Alt tags in SiteW is easy. Just drag and drop the Image block and then, choose your image. Once you have selected your image, you just need to enter the SEO description that corresponds to the Alt tag, search engines use to index images.

You just need to write a short description for your image, and that’s it. 🙌

Now you know everything to write effective Alt tags and take advantage of them. Start to boost your image SEO right now.

The Alt attribute is also important to improve user experience and retain internet users on your website as much as possible.

Create your website

Start the creation of your website for free.
No payment method is needed, there is no time limit.

Anaïs Sautarel
Translator
As confident in the mountains as with foreign languages, our contents and tool travel around English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries with me. 🌍

Last update: February 07, 2023

Create a website easily

  • Immediate launch
  • Intuitive creation
  • Quick-to-react customer service