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3.6.6 "Search Engines don't read images." So what?

Exactly as it says above, if something′ s written on an image, Search Engines can′ t read this text. But you can save yourself trouble and write nice ALT texts for all your images.

In fact, every image needs an ALT text. It′ s a brief description of the image, that′ s put in the image tag. ALT text is absolutely required by HTML standards. And, if you run your page through w3c validator like you did earlier, you′ ll see that it just won′ t let you go without ALT texts.

Image displayed in a browser Image′ s alt text displayed in a browser

If you disable images in your browser and load a new web page, you′ ll be able to see the ALT texts of the images.

On the right, you see the ALT text "Mens ASICS GEL–Kayano 19 Running Shoe" instead of the image showing the shoe itself.

Here′ s the thing: if there weren′ t any text, Search Engines wouldn′ t notice the image. They only see the ALT text saying "ASICS Running Shoe".

As Search Engines pay attention to ALT texts, they can be used for SEO. For instance, quite a lot of businesses get very good traffic from Image Search. And, if there were no ALT texts, image search just wouldn′ t work.

So, to get some more traffic, you should use keywords in your ALT texts.

And, one more thing to remember. People can also see these texts. Some of your visitors may use special browsers for people with visual, hearing, or other impairments. Others will view your site without downloading any images. The ALT text will tell everyone what′ s on the image, no matter how people view your site.

So make these texts meaningful and to the point and... never write "My asshole Boss" in the ALT tag of your CEO′ s picture ;)

DO IT NOW! Write good ALT texts for your images. Where possible, use your keywords in them. Make all changes available online.

Make your pages link to each other

Remember I told you, pages on your site must link one to another? That was, for the robot to have many ways to go. These links coming from pages of the same site are called internal links, and they can also help your SEO efforts as the robots also looks at the links′ texts. Time to say,

Links to your page must contain your keywords!

Check the links to your landing page, the one you′ re making right at the moment. Now, add keywords to the links′ texts. Just to let you know... This text you see on the link and click on is called anchor text.

And the HTML code to produce this link looks like this:

<a href="http://www.some–website.com">this is what we call "anchor text"</a>

The anchor should contain keywords specific for the page to which the link leads (not for the one where the link′ s put). If you link from a page about dogs to a page about cats, the anchor text should say "cats".

Now make good keyword–rich and logical anchor texts.

For instance, if your page′ s about vacation at the Caribbean and one of your keywords is tours to the Caribbean and the link to this page looked like this:

To learn more about tours to the Caribbean, click here,

then you′ d better replace it with

Learn more about tours to the Caribbean.

And, if you don′ t have links to this page yet, put links immediately, and use keywords. Your links must tell what they really link to.

But, again, never forget that people are going to read these texts. Sometimes webmasters use words just because they are good keywords — and never care what users will think.

For instance, when I was looking to buy a turtle for my son, I clicked a link with an anchor "exotic pets" on some website. But all I found was all kinds of cats. Imagine my disappointment. In this case, the webmaster could write all cat breeds or cats for sale, or cats and kittens. Then, if users clicked the link, they′ d find what they expect.

Yes, you can "cheat" Search Engines, but it′ s important not to cheat real users.

DO IT NOW! Make internal links with descriptive keyword–rich anchor texts.

Done with links? Here′ s a reminder for you: if you made a new page to optimize, the page is not yet in the sitemap, so don′ t forget to add it! (You don′ t have to submit the sitemap to Search Engines again; the robot will see the changes next time it comes.)

DO IT NOW! Add your new page to the Sitemap.

Now, publish your page to the web server, and the first cycle of on–page optimization is over.

DO IT NOW! Make your page available online.

25 comments

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#1667 2010-11-14 23:26:57 Mike Elliott

Wow Dan!
I just can't believe it! I went through my web site and gave all the banners and headings an ALT Tag as a result my Alexa ranking went from 4,385,528 to 2,229,418 and that's BEFORE I start redoing my keywords and redesigning my landing page. BTW what sort of attention grabber can I use for my site that sells cloassic movies and movie related memorabilia?

Answer
#1382 2010-08-12 06:40:24 Shoaib Abdullah

Excuse me Dan if I ask too many question. I have built a website about Interior Design. This site is at onpage optimization. My question is:
1) How much internal links should I use?
2) Is there any penalty for using too much internal links?
3) Should I point all the internal links to the home page/same page?
4) If I don't use the internal links right this moment, will it hurt my rankings?
5) On which page should I put the internal links?


Thanks from,
Shoaib

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#1134 2010-04-02 15:00:10 Amir Lamdan

Hi Dan
You mentioned in earlier chapter that using an image as a link is not SEO effective. Does using ALT tags make a different or should I put an image and add below it a text link?

Thanks

Amir

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#1141 2010-04-07 11:11:32 Dan Richmond

A text link with a keyword-rich anchor is the best. If you can't have a text link with a good anchor, it's better to have an image link with a keyword-rich ALT text.

Image with ALT is not as good as a text link with a good anchor. But still it's better than an image without an ALT text.

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#918 2010-01-05 04:31:40 Dan Richmond

@Paul Watchorn

Here's the page with the sitemap discussion:
http://www.seoinpractice.com/search-engines-friendly.html#3_2

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#916 2010-01-03 11:05:47 Paul Watchorn

Another great lesson, especially about keywords needing to specific for the page to which the link is going, very valuable tip that, I bet not too many people understand that one.
Really great info on the alt tags for the pictures, I wish I knew about that in 2004 when my property web site was made.
I am still (up to yesterday) uploading the property photos without naming them, I have 964 properties on the site with about 30 photos of each property, with names like thumb_Property%20in%20Bulgaria%20020.jpg.
I can’t believe I wasn’t told to do that!
I am still stuck on site maps though. Is a site map just a list of the pages, on a page of it’s own, and why can’t these robots just follow the links from page to page, Martin mentioned something about another site map XML? If the site has a map, why does Google need another one? I should do one………

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#866 2009-12-23 23:01:12 Tim Inglis

Magda...

I found an article with some information on this. http://ezinearticles.com/?Do-Alt-and-Title-Attributes-Help-With-SEO?&id=432783

This quote comes from the above mentioned article:
"In all of my testing scenarios, the title attribute do not seem to be picked up by Google and adding a link to that element did not seem to affect this result at all."

Hope this helps.

Tim.

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#788 2009-12-04 12:33:25 Maggik van Dijk

Hi Dan
What about the title tag we can use in images with the alt tag? Would that influence SEO?

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#778 2009-11-27 07:14:22 Dan Richmond

@Nick Trader

This means that a certain value, proportional to your PR, is also assigned to the linked-to pages. You PageRank is <i>not</i> divided between your outbound links.

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#777 2009-11-25 23:43:04 Nick Trader

Hello Dan,

I was wondering if you could explain this information about internal linking and PageRank that I found.

"the amount of PageRank a page can give to other pages is limited to the amount that it picks up from inbound links. The amount that it gives to other pages is divided between all the links going out from the page."

Does this mean if you have many links from your homepage or landing page linking to other internal pages your pagerank is divded between the amount of links on the page?

Nick Trader

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#502 2009-09-25 10:30:46 anna negrean

What would you suggest about the use of multiple anchor texts towards the same thing: the same keywords/keyphrases in anchor texts or different keywords that mean the same thing?

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