Images play an essential role in your website’s growth. Whether you own a WordPress website or any other, it’s best to include pictures in your blog posts to lure more audiences. It’s just simple— graphics make your content more pleasing.
There’s a famous catchphrase that states, “An image is worth a thousand words.” That’s very true. However, is it enough to just add an image on your WordPress blog and wait for it to do wonders on search engines?
Well, it’s not!
Adding images on your blog posts is very easy; however, optimizing them for SEO needs extra skills. You need to define alt tags for every photo you include on your WordPress website. But what are alt tags? And how can you add them? More on that soon!
Though WordPress comes with the easy option to add alt tags and image titles, it could be quite confusing for beginners. In this article, we’re going to take you through the entire process of how to add alt tags to images in WordPress.
In addition to that, you will know the importance of image alt tags from the perspective of Search Engine Optimization and your website’s growth.
Now let’s begin!
What Are Image Alt Tags?
Alt tags, alt text, or alternative text, these all refer to the same thing. These are the attributes added to an image tag in HTML. In simple terms, alt tags are a human-readable description that you add to your website’s images.
The alt tags appear inside the image container when your content image gets displayed. It helps search engines to know what an image is about. Alt tags are beneficial in cases when images on a page cannot be found.
This is the HTML code for image alt tags:
<img src= “image.jpg” alt= “image description” title= “ image tooltip”>
(The above is the clear example of alt tag of an image)
When you talk about image alt tags, never forget another crucial element, i.e., image title. It is another attribute that can be added to the image tag in HTML that is often used to define a title for your image.
The text entered inside the title tag won’t appear to the user when an image can’t get displayed. Instead, it gets displayed in a popup when you hover your cursor over the particular image.
Why Should You Use Alt Tags to Images in WordPress?
One obvious reason to use alt tags to images in WordPress is that they help search engines recognize your photos and display them on search engine results. Likewise, these tags boost your website’s accessibility and explain your images to audiences with special needs.
Google or other search engines recognize a post image with its tag. However, as the search engines are getting better these days, they can read images directly.
Nevertheless, you need to use alt attributes to the image and name the post image using keywords to ensure that your image gets read by search engines properly.
People often make mistakes by using images with names like img01.jpg.
You should strictly avoid doing that!
When assigning a name to an image, try to keep it relevant to the image.
For example, say you take a screenshot of the WordPress dashboard, and you name the image as “WordPress.” It won’t get targeted!
Instead, name it like “WordPress-dashboard” so that when people search for an image on a search engine, they will land on a photo from one of your posts.
There can be positive search engine results when using keywords while naming an image. Make sure you try this by using keywords in your image alt text. You can manually add image alt attributes when you upload an image to your blog.
Some Key Things to Note:
- While using an image, save it for the web and resize it via Photoshop. Saving for web and resizing the image can improve page load speed that leads to better user experience.
- High resolution and bulky pictures can ground increased bounce rates that might lead to user’s lack of interest in your blog post. You can easily use some of the WordPress image optimizer plugins to optimize the size and quality of your images.
Image alt tags also make for a better user experience. They display automatically inside the image container when an image can’t be found or displayed. Plus, it can improve accessibility for people with poor vision who use screen readers.
Having a proper alt tag and title helps to find your images easily on the web when someone looks for them through the image search engines like Google Images.
An Ideal Approach to Add Alt Tags to Images in WordPress
Once you upload an image using the built-in WordPress media uploader, you will see a box with some options, as shown below:
As in the image above, the box’s title field refers to the image title, and the alt text refers to alt tags. After you select an image, its original name directly gets filled up in the image title box.
Now you need to add some descriptive text on the alt text box, which describes what your image is about.
You don’t have to be critical when adding alt text or alt tag to an image. Simply type an adequate description of the image within the corresponding field. After that, save your changes, and you are good to go.
If you look closely, there’s an image caption section in the media uploader box. If you input something on the caption field, it gets displayed on the front end as a description for readers.
Similarly, the description field contains information that shows up if your user accesses an image URL directly.
When it comes to SEO, it’s never enough to simply add an image alt tag. It’s necessary to optimize it and ensure that it is effective. To do so, follow these steps:
- Always use a full sentence instead of a word or short phrase.
- Try to be as descriptive as possible and clearly explain what the image contains.
- Always include your primary keyword in your alt tags. If you are using images of products, try to include the item’s name and product ID on alt text for better results.
Bonus Tip: You can also add an image description to an image which gives more details than alt tags and allows your users to learn more about what is an image that goes beyond alt text.
Plugin to Add Alt Tags to Images in WordPress
If you want someone else to take care of your image alt tags, you can use different WordPress plugins designed to serve the purpose. One of those plugins is SEO Friendly Images.
This handy plugin automatically updates all images with proper alt and title attributes for SEO purposes. If your images are missing alt and title, this plugin adds them according to your set options.
Another great thing about the SEO Friendly Images plugin is that it makes the post W3C/xHTML valid.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
What to avoid while writing image alt tags?
The most important thing that you should avoid while writing image alt tags is keyword stuffing. Google or any other search engine, never appreciates it when you add more keywords to your image. For the best results, optimize your image alt tags to not more than 125 characters.
Do all images need alt tags?
Yes, each image should have an alt tag. It is not just for SEO purposes, but it also helps blind and visually impaired people know that the image is all about. The alt tag is utilized by screen readers, which are browsers for blind and visually impaired people. These screen readers tell them what is written on the image by reading the alt tag.
How to name images for SEO quickly?
To name images for SEO fast, follow these steps:
1. Optimize your page URL for your primary keyword.
2. Copy your edited URL or keyword phrase.
3. Copy the primary keyword phrase from your blog post title.
How to optimize images for SEO?
Follow these steps for SEO image optimization:
1. Use relevant images.
2. Use proper SEO image naming convention.
3. Save every image in the right file type.
4. Use image alt tags properly.
5. Add descriptive captions.
6. Add images to your website’s sitemap.
Do image names matter for your website’s SEO?
Yes, it does! It is vital to use relevant keywords to help your web page rank on search engines when it comes to image optimization. Creating descriptive and keyword-rich file names is essential for image optimization. Remember that search engines crawl the text on your web page and your image file names.
Final Words
As we said earlier, optimizing your images for SEO requires some skills and understanding. Add alt tags on them so that search engines crawl your pictures without any issues. We hope this guide on how to add alt tags to images in WordPress helps you with your cause.
Take your time to craft a proper alt tag for every image you add to your post or page on your website. Try to make it short and precise and include your primary keyword on it for better search engine results. If you add proper alt tags to your images, your site users, sight-challenged users, and search engines will thank you for it.
Also, check out our article on How To Add FAQ On Your WordPress Website.
Feel free to pass your comments below on any important factors that you find necessary for image optimization for SEO.
