Want to make your website more visible on big search engines like Google? A good way to start is with writing alt text for your site's images.
What is Alt Text?
Alternative text, or alt tags, are tags that allow you to add text to describe your website's images. This can be used to increase SEO and accessibility. They allow those that may be visually impaired to easily access your content, as well as assist search engines such as Google to gain context on your website's images.
Alt tags also serve as a backup description to your website as they appear in the case that an image fails to pop up, allowing the user experience to still be accessible even with loading errors.
How to Write Effective Alt Text
Before you go and label every image, be mindful of the images that you create alt text for. Only the most important and useful images require alt text, those that are purely decorative have no need for description.
Be Concise
When you do find an image that requires alt text, make sure you don't just mindlessly type out as many keywords as you can. This is actually considered "keyword stuffing", and can be penalized by search engines like Google. Make sure your keywords are relevant to actually describing the image, and focus on constructing a single descriptive line. This description is ideally below 125 characters to avoid being cut off by screen readers.
Avoid Filler Words
Because your text must be concise, avoid filler words and other fluff such as "The picture shows" or "An photograph of" to only pack in the most relevant and descriptive keywords possible.
Be Detailed
While inserting your relevant keywords, you must also ensure the description is specific and detailed enough to be able to describe the image to someone who cannot see it. For example, "blog tutorial for SEO alt text for website images" is more concise and understandable for a search engine with regards to this blog compared to "informative SEO web design tutorial alt image" which is more or less just a string of keywords.
Final Notes
Overall, your mission is to remain short and sweet, descriptive to the actual image, and insert relevant keywords to increase foot traffic towards your website.
With this information, you are well on your way to begin creating effective alternative tags for your images, and one step closer to elevating your med spa's website!
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