TLDR

Alt text is useful because it makes photos more accessible to both humans and search engines...

What Exactly Is Alt Text?

Alt text (alternative text) is a written description of an online image that serves as a substitute when the user is unable to view the image.

Alt text provides something for screen readers to read aloud to visually impaired users, assists search engine bots in understanding picture contents, and may appear on a webpage when an image fails to load.

Why Is Alt Text Necessary?

Alt text is useful because it makes photos more accessible to both humans and search engines. Even when they are not visible.

Screen readers cannot extract information from photos if sufficient alt text is not provided. Users with visual impairments are thus unfairly excluded. This might have a negative impact on your brand's reputation, traffic, and conversion rate.

Furthermore, web accessibility is beneficial to SEO.

Alt text is used by Google and other search engines to determine what photos depict (or link to). This can improve their grasp of your material, leading to improved rankings.

Alt text is especially useful for picture SEO, or ranking high in Google Images and other image search results.

This type of publicity might attract significant traffic to your website.

Best Practises for Writing Alt Text

Learn how to write alt text that improves the accessibility and SEO of your website.

We've compiled three alt text recommended practices to assist you in writing flawless alt text:

1. Add Alt Text to the Correct Images

Don't use alt text in the case of just decorative images. These descriptions, rather than providing essential context, can generate distraction and confusion for people with visual impairments.

Provide a null (empty) alt attribute instead.

2. Be Descriptive Yet Brief

According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), alt text should be "the most concise description possible of the image's purpose."

The significance of an image is determined by its surroundings. When developing alt text, keep the surrounding material and audience in mind.

Consider how you would describe a picture to someone over the phone while writing alt text.

You should not include the following information in your alt text:

  • Instead, provide photo credits and copyright information in the image caption.
  • Duplicate phrases such as "image of" or "photo of" (unless the format is especially relevant)
  • Add information that all of your readers require to the caption or body material instead.
  • Information that has already been provided by the image caption or body content.

When writing alt text for images, some people recommend keeping it to a maximum of 125 characters. This is due to the fact that many assistive technologies cease reading alt text after 125 characters. However, this is not a hard and fast rule.

3. Incorporate a Keyword

Including relevant keywords in the alt text of your photographs will help them rank higher in Google image results.

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