So, today we're going to talk about imagealt text optimization.
Or image alt tag optimization.
So, the process of optimizing all your imagesso that search engines understand them, and for accessibility issues.
There's a bunch of reasons why you would wantto do this.
So stay for the whole video, because we'regoing to talk through the exact, step-by-step process that you need to optimize all of yourimages in an SEO-friendly way that's also helpful for users.
I'm Tommy Griffith with ClickMinded.
com.
Let's get going.
Okay, so image alt text optimization for searchengines.
Optimizing your images in a way that's goodfor search engines and good for users as well.
So let's dive into this in a little bit, butbefore we do that, I just want to do kind of a quick reminder here.
So we can zoom out a little bit and reallyget the context of what we're talking about.
We're talking about an SEO component, right? An SEO is only one piece of digital marketing.
This is very specifically a search engineoptimization tactic.
But there's a lot of other things that youcan be doing in order to drive traffic and customers to your website.
So do keep that in mind.
And within SEO, image alt text optimizationis only one piece of the entire SEO puzzle.
So just getting this right, or just gettingthis wrong, is not going to make or break you either way.
Do keep that in mind, this is only one component.
Image alt text and file names.
Let's talk a little bit this.
So, first of all, state the obvious.
Search engines are not humans, right? They do not view or see images the way thatwe do.
So we as SEOs or we as digital marketers haveto do some things to help search engines along a little bit.
To kind of give them some hints on what thatimage is about.
So we help search engines see images by namingthem correctly.
This is also used for accessibility.
So visually impaired or blind users, theyuse these special browsers that read images to them.
And our image alt text and our file namescan be helpful for that.
Helpful for users that are using special browserslike this, so it's an accessibility issue as well.
So do keep that in mind.
When you're writing your alt text, in generalthere's 125 character maximum.
So you can populate that as much as you'dlike, as long as it's reasonable.
Don't forget the file name.
This happens a lot.
A lot of people are uploading a file, it'scalled home-page-graphic-6.
jpeg, right, that's not good.
You can be much more descriptive than that.
So please do it if you can.
And finally, this tactic is very prone toover optimization.
I know this because I used to do it.
I used to over optimize this.
It's not good at all.
When people first getting into search engineoptimization, they get really excited about this.
They go through the entire checklist and theysay, okay, here's all the things I need to do to rank higher in Google.
I'm really excited about this.
And then they get to image optimization, andthey look at their images, and they just overdo it.
They stuff it with too many keywords.
It ends up being not descriptive at all.
This is very prone to over optimization, soplease try and avoid it if you can.
Let's look at a couple of examples.
I've grabbed an image here from Zappos, sowe have an image, right.
The file name is mens-boat-shoe.
jpeg.
Whenever you have spaces in your files names, you want to use hyphens, not underscores.
So hyphen indicates a space.
So, mens-boat-shoe.
jpeg.
And the alt text, or the alt tag, is mens-boat-shoe.
That's okay.
Kind of a standard sort of image and alt tagoptimization.
Could be a little better.
Could definitely be worse.
I think this is fine for all intents and purposes.
So that's an example of what the actual codelooks like.
This is within an actual image, right, sobefore the image tag closes, both the file name and the alt tag are both there.
Now with that said, this is okay, right, butit could be better.
So let's look at an example of kind of likea bad, better, best situation.
So here we have a woman.
A redheaded woman.
She's younger.
She's on a phone.
A bad example might be, image source = woman.
png.
So the file name is called woman, and thealt tag is woman.
Better than nothing, but not that good.
This is bad, this is a bad .
.
.
Not descriptiveenough, right? Better might be, woman-phone.
png, right, asthe file name.
And then the alt tag, woman-using-phone.
Better, but could be improved for sure.
And the best might be, you know, a file namecalled, red-hair-millennial-woman-iPhone10-iPhoneX.
png.
And then the alt tag, redheaded-millennial-woman-using-an-iPhone10.
Right? So, much more descriptive.
A lot of different types of phrases in there.
The way to think about this is like, readyour alt tag out loud, close your eyes.
Or have a friend, right, read it out loudto a friend.
Have them close their eyes.
And sort of visualize what you're saying.
And then see how close that visualizationis to your actual image.
If you can be descriptive about it, if youget close, you're in good shape.
But using the bad example, woman.
If I just said to you, woman, imagine a woman.
This isn't .
.
.
It's not descriptive at all, right.
That's terrible.
So, just keep this in mind when you're doingit.
The rule of thumb here is, be descriptivein both your file names and in your alt text.
It's great for search engines, it's one morecomponent of the entire sort of SEO equation.
And it's also very helpful form an accessibilityperspective, for visually impaired and blind users.
And so that's it.
That's really all there is to image alt textor image alt tag optimization.
So I hope that was useful.
If it was helpful and if you learned somethingtoday, go ahead and click subscribe down below for even more digital marketing tactics andtips from us.
If you're on YouTube, I would love a commentfrom you.
What'd you think? Do you optimize your images in a differentway? Have you seen any bad alt tags out there? I would love a comment.
If you want to leave one right now, I readevery single one.
Finally, if you want our comprehensive SEOchecklist that lists everything that you need to do in order to rank higher in search engines, go ahead and click that link down below to CLickMinded.
com to get your free checklistright now.
Thanks a lot.
.
