Images are an important part of any modern website, helping to engage visitors, communicate information and improve the overall user experience. However, search engines cannot interpret images in the same way that people can. This is where Alt text becomes important. But what is Alt text? And why is Alt text important for website SEO?

What is Alt text?

Alt text is short for alternative text and this is text used to describe an image. This is actually written as a piece of HTML that fits into the code of your website, and as such, this text tag is able to describe the image not just to a person using your website, but also to any search engines crawl bots that will be accessing your website.

What is Alt text used for?

Alt text was originally used to describe the images on your website in case these images didn’t load. At the beginning of the Internet era it was entirely possible for images to be too large or heavy to load and so the alt text would be displayed to show website users what the missing piece of content should be. With the increase in image optimisation for Web, and high quality image compression, as well as so called “lazy loading”, this is unlikely to be an issue with modern and well designed website images. So why is this still important? Well this Alt text serves other purposes too, including:

Making your website more accessible- one of the main reasons why Alt text is still so important is because this will be used for people using a screen reader. For people with sight impairments a screen reader will read the content of your website out loud and slow good alt text will describe any images and visual elements to ensure that all of your potential customers and clients have a positive user experience.
Improving website SEO- the second reason to include good and effective alt tags is to improve the SEO. As this text will be read and understood by search engine toils, this simple HTML tag can have a positive impact on your websites SEO.

Why is Alt text important for website SEO?

So how does Alt text have an impact on website SEO? Well, as part of your on page SEO, Alt text can help your website rank more highly, and for a wider range of keywords, as this actually counts as a ranking factor for Google image searches.

Google image searches can be a fantastic tool for companies and businesses to use to attract more organic traffic, although this is often overlooked. For companies in particular niches and industries many potential customers or clients may even begin their search with an image search, and ranking highly here can direct these customers directly to your website, where you can then convert them to paying customers.

How do you write effective Alt text?

Writing effective Alt text is about providing a clear and concise description of the image while remaining relevant to the content on the page. Good Alt text should explain the purpose or content of the image in a natural way rather than simply listing keywords. For example, instead of using Alt text such as “SEO marketing digital agency website rankings”, it would be more effective to write “Digital marketing specialist reviewing website SEO performance data”. This provides useful context for both users and search engines. As such, when writing Alt text, it is important to:

describe the image accurately
keep descriptions concise
include relevant keywords naturally where appropriate
focus on the purpose of the image within the content

How long should Alt text be?

There is no strict character limit for Alt text, but it should generally be concise while providing enough information to accurately describe the image. In most cases, one short sentence will be sufficient. The aim is to provide enough detail for users relying on screen readers without creating lengthy descriptions that may negatively affect the user experience. If an image contains complex information, such as a chart or infographic, additional explanatory content elsewhere on the page may be required.

Should every image have Alt text?

Most images on a website should include Alt text, particularly those that provide useful information or support the content on the page. However, purely decorative images do not always require descriptive Alt text.

Decorative images are visual elements that do not add any meaningful information for the user. In these cases, an empty Alt attribute can be used so that screen readers ignore the image rather than reading unnecessary descriptions. Understanding the difference between informative and decorative images can help improve accessibility while ensuring that screen reader users receive only relevant information.

For more information about SEO, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design. We are Preston’s leading web design and web marketing professionals. We provide a wide range of website solutions and SEO services across Preston and the North West, from Blackburn and Bolton, to Southport, Wigan, and even Manchester. We work with businesses of all sizes and across a wide variety of sectors, from local service providers to established commercial brands. So, for more information about SEO, content marketing, traffic growth and web design, get in touch with the experts at Pumpkin Web Design today.