Alt-text improves SEO by providing search engines with context about an image, allowing them to understand and index it accurately. This enhances the image's discoverability and contributes to the overall relevance and visibility of a webpage in search results.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) with image recognition capabilities can be leveraged to generate descriptive captions for images, a feature that can be particularly beneficial for enhancing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This tool not only saves time but also provides a solid foundation for crafting meaningful and relevant image descriptions.
Once the AI generates an initial description, such as "a woman laying in a field of tall grass", it can be tailored to better fit your specific context or use-case. This is where your creativity and understanding of your content come into play. To illustrate, the aforementioned description can be modified to "a fashion photograph of a woman laying in a field of tall grass", thereby shifting the focus onto fashion photography. Through this process, you're able to infuse more specificity into the description, which can contribute to a more effective SEO strategy.
Now, why is this important for SEO, or Search Engine Optimization? Well, search engines like Google can't "see" images like we can. They rely on alt-text to understand what an image is showing. When you use alt-text properly, it helps search engines index your images accurately, which can improve your website's visibility in image search results.
Plus, alt-text isn't just useful for search engines. It also helps people who use screen readers—software that reads out the contents of a screen for those who are visually impaired.
Use meaningful file names, titles and alt texts
Google extracts information about the subject of the image from the content of the page, including image captions and titles. If possible, ensure that images are placed near relevant text and on pages that are relevant to the subject of the image.
The file name can also give Google certain clues about the subject of the image. If possible, use short but meaningful file names. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG. If possible, do not use generic file names such as image1.jpg, pic.gif or 1.jpg. If your website contains thousands of images, automatic naming of the images could be useful for you. When localizing your images, make sure to translate the file names. Observe the URL coding guidelines if you use non-Latin characters or special characters.
The most important attribute when providing additional metadata for an image is the alt text (text used to describe the image). This can also improve accessibility for users who cannot see images on websites - including users who use screen readers or low-bandwidth connections.
Google uses the alt text together with machine vision algorithms and the content of the page to understand the subject of the image. Alt text in images is also useful as anchor text when you use an image as a link.
The most important goal when writing your alt text is useful, informative content with appropriate keywords that relate to the page content. Do not overload alt attributes with keywords (also known as superfluous keywords) as this is not user-friendly and can quickly lead to your website being classified as spam. (Source / Google.com)