Images can be a powerful tool for engaging and informing your website visitors. They assist people with visual learning styles to understand your content better, and also add aesthetic appeal to your website. However, to make images more useful for search engines and humans, you should take the time to optimize their file names and alt attributes. In this article, we’ll walk you through what each of these is and best practices for optimizing them.
What Is An Alt Attribute?
An alt attribute, also known as alt text, provides a description of an image in a simple, formatted text. This description appears when the image cannot be displayed or if a person with visual impairments uses a screen reader to access your website. Not only do alt attributes communicate the meaning of the image, but they can also help improve the website’s search engine ranking.
Best Practices for Alt Attributes
Describe the Image Accurately and Concisely
The most important thing when writing alt attributes is accurately describing the image. The description should be concise, and it should avoid superfluous details.
Use Keywords
Don’t be afraid to include a keyword in your alt text to help improve the image’s relevance to search engines. Try to keep keyword usage natural-sounding and avoid using a single keyword throughout all images on the page.
Avoid Spamming
It’s important to strike the right balance. Alt text should be expressive and well-written, but alt spamming—repeating the same word or phrase for each image—is a dark pattern search engines penalize.
Consider The Use of Special Characters
If appropriately employed, some special characters such as semicolons, hyphens or commas can be used to increase alt text effectiveness without making it overly complex.
What Is A File Name?
A file name is the name of the file where an image is stored. With the exception of audio or video files, file names should be unique. This means that each image should have a file name that is unique throughout the website.
Best Practices for File Names
Include Keywords
In an effort to further optimize images for search engines, you should categorize images according to the terms for which you hope to rank. Should an image pertain to a specific keyword or phrase, it would be helpful to include that word or phrase in the file name.
Keep It Simple
File names should be clear, concise, and to the point. Keep file names short, making sure they communicate the purpose of the image and are free of special characters that may cause confusion. Avoid using spaces, and use hyphens as a separator between words.
Avoid Naming Images after Numbers or Collection IDs
When considering a file name, take the time to think about whether the name you propose is descriptive enough, and not just arbitrary. The goal is to advice search engines with keywords and not provide an identifier.
Conclusion
Optimizing alt attributes and file names is a fundamental aspect of image management within a website. Not only can it help improve the accessibility and usability of your website, but it can also help to improve search engine ranking. Remember to keep alt attribute and file name text clear and concise, include keywords and avoid spamming. By following these best practices, you’ll be well on your way to effectively optimizing images.