If you’ve been experimenting with WordPress search engine optimization for a while, you’re probably already aware of the fact that images do play a pretty significant part in how likely the search engines are to take notice of your content. You also probably know that filling out the tag that gives a description of images is vital to search engine optimization. Many premium WordPress themes. are designed so that, when you put an image up on a blog post, you’re instantly given the option to fill out your tag. Let’s take a look at why it’s important for you to do this.
SEO for images
There are various technologies being utilized by search engines these days that allow search engines to interpret images in certain ways. For instance, there are search engine features that could take an image of a horse standing in a field and utilize that to help you find other images that are similar. That being said, search engines are still fairly dumb when it comes to understanding images. They need that tag to truly understand what the image is and what it applies to.
Step one in search engine optimizing images is making sure your tag has your keywords in it. This lets the search engine know that the image is related to the keywords that the user was searching for. It’s also a sneaky, but totally above the board, way to get your keyword associated with your post.
Real People
It’s easy to forget that everybody uses the Internet these days and that the collective term “everybody” includes people who have difficulty seeing. Many such people utilize different types of screen readers to help them navigate through a site. The screen readers pick up HTML tags and can read that content to the user. If you fill out your tag correctly, you can really help these users and search engines will look favorably upon this. Here’s an example of a bad and good tag structure for an image on a site related to repairing carburetors:
- Bad: Carburetor repair, repair your car, carburetor maintenance
- Good: A man repairs his carburetor with carburetor cleaner
Notice that the good tag tells you what’s going on in the image and still uses the main keywords. If somebody was going through your page with a screen reader, they might not be able to see the image due to a physical disability, but they could certainly understand what was going on in the image. This can make a big difference in search engine optimization.
About author
Olga Ionel is a creative writer at ThemeFuse.com – a top provider of premium WordPress themes. She is passionate about studying online marketing industry and sharing informative tips.