The art and science of optimising your content for search engines like Google, is as much about optimising images too.
Optimising your images helps your website to be found via image search. A good logo or eye-catching pictures can be as effective at bringing visitors to your website as all your carefully crafted blog words.
How do you optimise the images on your WordPress website?
This is one of the most common questions I get asked by new customers. Some websites we take over the management of are old or the previous website developer didn’t understand search engine optimisation; at least as far as image name is concerned.
Alt-text is the Text Shown When Images Don’t Load
Often missed, the alt-tag is how you describe your image in words – these are read by Google.
Alt-text should be clear, descriptive, concise and not stuffed keywords. It is read aloud by screen reading software when visually impaired people are on your site. For example, take this image below of a google 5 star rating. I might write “This is an image representing the Google 5 star customer reviews rating .”
The alt-text is also what shows up in the text box that appears when you hover over an image.
If you’re using the recent WordPress version with the Gutenberg editor you can put the alt tag info in by clicking the image in your article and the alt-tag will show on the right-hand side as follows.
The Caption will show up underneath the image on the live article. This helps the reader see what the image is for, in the same way that a caption is used in books and articles. It is used less by Google.
If you found this useful, you might like to read 10 SEO Tips on How to Write Articles Search Engines Love.
