Images are an integral aspect for any website content. They improve the visual representation of the context, and they help in breaking down the monotony of large chunks of texts. But what if we told you that you can also use images for digital marketing?
A professional digital marketing agency uses pictures to improve your search engine optimization and help your website rank higher. The agency will also use images strategically to outrank the number one position in searches. But how can an image accomplish all that? Surprisingly, it is not the image, but the alt text which accompanies the image accomplishes all these objectives.
In this article, we are going to discuss the several digital marketing benefits of using appropriate alt texts for the images on your website content.
What Is Alt Text?
Alt texts are also called alt attributes or alt descriptions. It is a short description of the image which the developers use in the HTML coding of the website. If you have used WordPress, you would have noticed that it asks you for an alt text input on the right side below the image icon. But you must be wondering what is the purpose of this alt text since you don’t see that on the website.
Alt texts were originally introduced so that people with disabilities who cannot see the images on websites are notified of the presence and the purpose of an essential pictorial representation. Blind people use assistive devices like screen readers that read out the contents of a website, including the alt texts present in the HTML coding. However, experts soon realized that alt texts serve several more digital marketing purposes.
Alt Text and SEO
Web designers and digital marketing experts have realized that search engines cannot see the images present on a website either. That means if a website is full of pictures, the search engines will not be able to decipher the purpose of those images. So they will contribute nothing to increase the ranking of the web pages on search engines.
However, digital marketing experts can provide the information regarding the image in the alt description, so that search engine bots can understand that there is a picture with a certain purpose on the website. The search engine crawlers will use that information to match the search queries and rank the website accordingly. You have to ensure that you provide the appropriate keywords in the description that matches the images and helps with the SEO.
Alt texts are also efficient in helping your website and social media pages rise above the number one position on search engine result pages (SERP). You may have noticed that some options come up in the topmost part of search pages with an image next to it. These are called featured snippets, and they appear on top because they answer the query in the best possible way.
Most people don’t realize that the image and the website shown in the featured snippet can be from two different sources. So if the alt text of an image matches the question posed by the user, it can appear on top of the search results. It can improve your website’s visibility and increase traffic as well.
Best Practices
Providing alt texts for images may not be adequate to improve the SEO and digital marketing of your website. You must follow some guidelines to ensure that the alt description matches the search query so that they can appear in searches. Some of these practices are as follows.
- Make sure that the alt texts you use are descriptive enough to cover the topic of the image. The more descriptive it is, the better it will be for the SEO. You would normally have a limit of using up to 100 characters for alt texts. Short descriptions may serve the purpose of describing the image, but they will not suffice for better SEOs.
- Do not prolong your alt text unnecessarily. If the alt text does match the image provided, it can hamper the user experience and can get reported against your website.
- Make sure you use the necessary keywords in the alt text that can rank your website higher and increase the traffic for your business. These keywords will help the search engine bots get the right information while they crawl through your website.
Alt Text and Accessibility
As we mentioned before, the original purpose of alt texts was to make the website accessible to blind users. But with the help of alt descriptions, you can make your digital and social media marketing accessible to the numerous users who cannot see your website.
Making a website accessible not only improves its visibility to blind users, but it will also help you to enhance your brand image and increase brand awareness by taking a social stance. Regular users will also appreciate you for that and pay attention to your website’s content.
Alt texts have several advantages for businesses that use digital marketing strategies to improve their website’s reach and visibility. It helps the search engine optimization efforts as well as makes the website accessible to users who are visually impaired. Therefore use alt texts strategically to improve the digital presence of your business.
Leave a Reply