Website Image Tip

Images are often the biggest factor determining if a viewer stays or leaves your site. They often tell the visitor more about your business than all of the text put together. It really is never the case that these images should just be thrown on, take some time to think about what that image says about you and your business.

In addition to this there is one technical element that 100’s of businesses overlook and by doing so actually damage their website and ultimately their business.

The rule these sites are breaking is: if you upload an image without adding any text to the “alt-text” section you are making a huge error

Alt-text is short for “alternative text.” This simply means a brief description of an image, yet this text is not displayed on the site itself (like a caption), but rather it is a part of the site’s internal make up or meta information. Despite the fact that only few site visitors will read the actual alt-text, it is still highly important for two main reasons:

It’s an SEO booster: Google and other search engines are not able to read images. They can only read text. So all of those lovely, well thought out images are invisible! This means that you can use alt-text to introduce optimized and targeted content that will improve your search results ranking.

It makes your site accessible: Site visitors with vision impairments rely on screen readers to help them surf the web. These readers, like search engines, cannot read images. Alt-text can help in such cases by describing the image and its role in the full site’s context, making it comprehensible even to visitors who cannot fully view it.

So what should you add to your “alt-text” section?

The key is to keep it coherent and short. This text should not be over 15 words and should make sense if read aloud. If you can get some key words in there great but never crowbar them in. The context is vital and it has to make sense.

Now you know, how many of your images are missing this vital information which could make a huge difference to your online presence?