What is ALT Tag for SEO?

Talking about SEO, there are small things like alt tag that make difference on where your blog stands in SERP. ALT Tag is one of the most important among them.

Images are always attractive and it is said that one image speaks thousand words. It is not only human readers pleased with images but search engines too like them. Images and videos in your post indicates your seriousness on it and worth giving it more value. But the problem is that search engine crawlers don’t see the images! They know the image is there but without any idea of what it is about. Thus, to make them easier we use ALT Tags. Crawlers read the Alt Tags and send data to the server to index.

Alt tags are HTML attribute of IMG tag. To insert any image into web page, we use IMG tag. IMG supports a few attributes like src, width, height, alt etc that specify the respective property of the image. Alt tags can be supplied as follows:

< img src = “image_source_path” alt = “The description about image for robots” >

But you don’t use HTML codes to write your blog posts and good thing is that you don’t always need to switch to code view to specify Alt tags for your images. You are welcome if you prefer to go to source code and add alt=”alternate text” by yourself. The result is same though.

Insert Alt Tag from WordPress Editor

If you are writing your blog post on WordPress Editor, you can specify Alt Tag when inserting or editing images by filling up the ‘Alternate Text’ box. Please refer the image above where I’ve set ‘SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid’ as alternate text for my image.

Insert Alt Tag from Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer is probably the most loved blog editing software and I often use it to compose my blog posts.

If you use Windows Live Writer to compose you blog posts, it is even more easier to specify Alt tag on the images. you can click on the image and then click on Alt Text button on Format ribbon.

Click the image first if you don’t see Format ribbon on your WLL.

The text you enter in ‘Alternate text’ box is use as Alt tag. Enter descriptive text that tells what the picture is about including your keywords so that it will help search engine crawlers to index it properly.

Additionally enter the Title text. This text will appear when readers move the mouse pointer above the image. Write there something that will help human readers to know what the picture is about.

Use WordPress plugins to automate Alt tag on images

WordPress is really awesome for the capabilities it allows to automate most of the essential tasks. Talking about the Alt tags, you can find some nice plugins that will set Alt tag for the images automatically. You can use SEO Friendly Images plugin. Additionally, if you have SEO plugins, check its settings. There might be the option to enable auto-filling alt tag on images. I’m using SEO Pressor plugin and all I need to do is to mark a check box.

So, specify Alt Tag for all your images and make them able to speak to the search engine crawlers. Let Alt tag tell the crawlers what they are showing to the readers.