Images play an important part on your website. Humans are visual beings and are drawn to images–which can grab your audience’s attention even before they read anything on your website. Incorporating images into your post can be simple, but one of the greatest oversights that even website designers and professional website developers make is optimizing images on your websites for search engines.
Millions of people browse through images every day using web tools like Google Image Search. If the images on your website are optimized correctly with specific keywords, your image alone can bring in a lot of traffic to your website. Your website can gain more recognition and relevance by using the benefits of optimizing images with alt tags. Some of the key benefits of optimizing images with alt tags and title tags include:
- An increase in search traffic to your website
- Gaining the ability to have a higher quality of search traffic to your website
- More engaged website visitors
Although HTML tags can be quite confusing, knowing and adding the basics to your website can increase traffic exponentially.
Alt Tags for Images
Alt tags, also known as alt attributes, are “alternative text” for an image on your website. A lot of the time alt tags are made to describe the image for search engines–it helps search engines gain a better understanding of what your image and content is about so it can properly place your website within the ranks of their search results.
Title Tags for Images
Title tags are basically titles for your images. Title tags give the reader a little bit of information about your image and its connection to your web post. When you hover your mouse over an image, a little tag as well as a hyperlink will pop up that is visible to everyone, so it is important to choose words carefully that help explain your content. Title tags should be short, simple and to the point, using only around three to five words. Title tags for images is a great way to include keywords as well–as SEO applies to title tags and alt tags when search engines rank your website.
Below are a few guidelines to follow when creating alt tags and title tags to images on your website or post:
- Figure out what image you want to use. The image should relate to the subject matter that you are writing about!
- Use keywords that you use for SEO and find a universal keyword to use. Be sure the keywords correspond for the image.
- Proof reading is important! Make sure to save your work and read your page as a draft before hitting the “submit” button. Hover over your image to verify that your title tag is showing properly.
Images are important for your website, and knowing how to optimize your images for search engines can bring in a lot of traffic. If you have any questions about SEO, or image optimization, call our office today!