Alt Text
Alt Text (Alternative Text) is a brief description added to images in digital content to provide context for search engines and accessibility tools.
Description
In digital marketing, Alt Text serves two main purposes: improving search engine optimization (SEO) and making content accessible to users with disabilities. For SEO, Alt Text helps search engines understand the content of an image, which can improve the page's ranking in search results. For accessibility, Alt Text provides a textual description of images for screen readers used by visually impaired users. It ensures that everyone, regardless of their ability, can understand the content conveyed by images. Well-crafted Alt Text is specific, concise, and relevant to the image and surrounding content. Overstuffing it with keywords or making it overly verbose can harm both user experience and SEO performance.
Examples
- For a blog post about healthy recipes featuring an image of a salad, good Alt Text could be: 'Bowl of fresh green salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocado on a wooden table.' This Alt Text describes the image accurately and helps search engines understand the context of the content.
- For an e-commerce site selling shoes, an image of a pair of running shoes might have Alt Text like: 'Pair of black and white Nike running shoes with a red swoosh logo.' This provides specific details that are useful for both SEO and visually impaired users.
Additional Information
- Alt Text should be concise, ideally under 125 characters.
- Avoid starting Alt Text with phrases like 'Image of' or 'Picture of.'