Alternative text, most commonly known as alt-text, describes images for those with visual impairments to transcribe the image, infographic, or videos on websites.

Alt text should be added to all websites to help those with visual impairments, and at the same time, it can help with SEO. 

What is an example of alt text? 

An image on your website should have a description of the image. If the image is uploaded as “IMG_68999” that is how it will read back to those using assistive technology to help them navigate the site. 

Instead, it should state something about the image, such as, “Man who is using a calculator”. It doesn’t have to be an extravagant description, but for visually impaired or blind people, it can be a world’s difference between understanding a website and its content. 

This is the importance of alt text for accessibility and SEO strategies! 

Importance for accessibility 

When government organizations speak of accessibility it goes farther than accessible parking and bathrooms. Everyone uses the internet and everyone should be able to use it effectively. A website’s accessibility starts at the very first piece of code, images, tables, logos, content and so much more. 

Recently, the National Federation of the Blind acknowledged that AccessiBe, a company that provides overlay solutions for website pages was purposefully not accessible to their audience. 

What is an overlay? As stated by AddThis, “an overlay is a graphical content box that appears in the middle of a page, obscuring the background content. Website overlays are also commonly referred to as dialog boxes, modal windows, lightboxes, and popups.” 

With over one million people in the United States who are blind, and three million who have visual impairments, websites must be accessible to all users, and this demographic that is often forgotten. 

There is a way to be accessible, and at the same time, use alt text SEO. 

Importance for SEO  

As explained above, alt text is used for transcribing images to those who are using assistive technology to help them navigate the internet, but with those descriptions, they can be optimized for SEO! 

This provides context to Google to help it understand the page’s context, and in-return can help the page or website itself be crawled quicker! The faster that Google can crawl and understand your website, the better it is for your site’s ranking! 

This is how to write good alt text for accessibility and SEO! 

• Be concise: No need for lengthy descriptions 
• Accuracy: Focus on describing the image and move on
• Keywords: Only add them if they naturally fit
• Avoid stating it is an image: No need to say, “infographic of” or “image of” they already know it is an image. 

This is how alt text SEO can be implemented for those navigating your website and search engines as well. 

Hire us! 

Our website developers and designers have many years of experience in designing and developing websites with accessibility in mind and work with our SEO professionals to ensure that all pages are optimized for everyone. 

For more information on this subject or any of our strategies, contact us today.