ALT Text & ALT Tags

Alternative Text (ALT Text) is used to describe the content of an image. The primary use of this tool is to give the user information about the image in the event that the image fails to display in their browser for whatever reason. Another reason why ALT text is used is as a means to give information to users who use accessibility tools to navigate their computer screens. These tools may read out the ALT Text to the user so they understand what each image represents.

The code for ALT Text is as follows: alt= followed by text offering a description of the image in quotation marks. Eg. alt=”2017 Car Brand A 200XE”. When uploading an image to your blog or website, however, there should already be an ALT Text field where you can input your ALT text directly, so you don’t have to use any additional code.

How Does ALT Text Work?

The text needs to be short and concise, being able to fit into the image size on the page. When a user hovers their cursor over the displayed image, this text will sometimes also appear. Text for images is a useful tool for keyword optimization and helps to increase page rankings. For the above example of ALT Text, any user typing in the search term “2017 Car Brand A 200XE” will have a direct match to image text and this text should also appear several times in the content of the page.

One must always be aware of keyword stuffing—as search engines will rate a page negatively if a keyword or keywords appear too many times on the same page. ALT Text can play a role in keyword stuffing if keywords are not used in the relevant context, and this will usually be detected and negatively affect the page ranking.