How to write SEO-friendly alt text for your images

One of the biggest problems digital marketers face is nuances to crafting high-quality SEO rich content.

A great area of opportunity for marketers is their SEO alt text for images. We’ve all been to websites and the image is replaced by a red “X”, or it’s just a blank box. Wouldn’t it be great if you could benefit from that image box for an increased search engine ranking?

That’s where alt text comes in.

Alt text is just a way to describe what is going on in the image while actively increasing your ranking through smart, thoughtful placement of SEO keywords. We are going to look at ways you can improve your image alt text while keeping your content search engine friendly.

Research keywords before you start

It’s important that you look carefully into which keywords you’re going to use before you start creating content including your alt text. Google’s Keyword Planner tool can help you make educated decisions about which words are best suited for your website, depending on your niche. When

you’re researching keywords, the best practice is to look for words that feature high search volume but low competition. The reason for this thought process is simple.

High volume, high competition keywords result in an uphill battle that you may not win. If there are plenty of people searching for the words you pick, but a bunch of reputable websites who have a high domain authority, you’re going to have a much harder time reaching the top of the search engine results.

At the same time, low competition, low search keywords mean your website probably will not get the traffic you need to thrive. The happy medium is words that are popular, but not dominated by highly authoritative sites. The success of your keywords is going to reflect not just in your content or title, but in your alt text, making this an important starting point.

Supplement your alt text with primary keywords

It’s worth pointing out that alt text is important, but it should never take priority over your researched and currently implemented SEO. You would never want to rearrange your pre-arranged keywords to make the alt text keywords fit.

Instead, try to find images that compliment the keywords you’ve already selected. When you work backwards from your alt text images, you could end up with a page that is more focused on the images instead of the content throughout.

The only exception to this rule is if your content is image heavy. Companies that implement slideshows, photo galleries, and the likes may benefit more from working backwards from their images instead of the other way around.

Connect the content to the image text

Another common mistake that SEO marketers make is they don’t directly link the alt text to the content they create. Alt text, as mentioned, is just text that describes what’s going on in the image. If you want to make a strong connection with your audience and the search engine results, make sure you make a connection between the text in your content, the image, and the alt text.

For example, if your piece of content was about website design, your content should include text within the piece that explains the image. In this fictional piece, let’s say your keyword is “expert web design”, you’re going to need to include an image that emphasizes your point, explains the image in the content, and the alt text should include the keyword.

Keep it short

Since the main purpose of alt text is to inform the reader of what the image shows if they can’t view it, your alt-text should never drag on. Simply explain what the image shows using your keywords as the primary descriptor and additional text as needed.

The recommended alt-text length is about 125 characters. Some browsers only create one line of alt-text and allocate the size of the image to the length of the one line. The result of a long alt text line is not just “search engine confusion”, but also reader confusion when they cannot finish the line of text from within the image because it was cut off by the browser they are using.

If you find that your alt text is always longer than 125 characters, your point is probably better off posted in the actual content of the article instead of the alt image text.

Examples of SEO-friendly alt text

First, let’s take a look at the source code:

<img src=”Image.gif” alt=”alt-text-goes-here

In this example, the “image.gif” is the image that is displayed to those who can properly see the image. Those who can’t see the image will instead see the text you include where it says “alt-text-goes-here”.

Here are some better examples to give you an idea of what a good SEO-friendly piece of alt text looks like.

Example one

You own a pet shop and your display picture is a kitten in a basket at your pet shop. Your source code should look something like this:

The goal is to make your alt-text clean, concise, and friendly to the keywords you decided to target in your piece.

Example two

Now let’s say you have an online car accessory shop. You sell things like seat covers, floor liners, and air fresheners. On your air freshener page your alt text will look like this:

In the example above, you’re targeting air fresheners, new cars, cars in general, and car accessories.

Example three

Finally, you have a membership site that sells marketing tips to your audience. You have an infographic of marketing statistics everyone should know in 2019. How will your alt-text look in this situation? Since you obviously can’t fit every stat in your alt-text, you might say:

Piecing it together

There’s no doubt that alt text plays a crucial role in an online world consumed by the importance of keywords. If you want to make the most of your alt text, keep these tips in mind and remember that the online world is constantly evolving.

As your website grows in size and authority you may have to make changes to your SEO keywords for future articles, and therefore for your alt text. The good news is, this allows you to pull off some interesting split tests to see which keywords are ranking well for you, and which ones are pulling in lacklustre results.

One thing is clear, don’t underestimate the power of alt text as it relates to your readers and your search ranking. It may not be the most important factor, but correctly creating optimized images and alt text is an important piece of the puzzle.

Syed Balkhi is an entrepreneur, marketer, and CEO of Awesome Motive. He’s also the founder of WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, and MonsterInsights. Syed can be found on Twitter

How to Write SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

If you’re actively publishing relevant blog posts on your company website, you’re already making big strides toward stronger SEO for your site’s domain. Blogging can be a huge driver of SEO—especially when you know how to set up each post for search engine success! To get started, here are seven tips for writing SEO-friendly blog posts.

1. Build Your Blog Around Topics Rather than Keywords

You can’t write about everything, and you also don’t want to write about just anything. To narrow your focus, choose three to eight core topics for your company blog. Every post should correlate with one of these themes, and each time you publish a new blog, you’ll add to your thought leadership on that topic. This also makes it easier to add internal links to other relevant blogs in each new post. The more internal links there are to a particular page, the more important that URL will appear to search engines.

For instance, at SmartBug, we publish content around seven distinct topics, which allows readers to filter content by category and jump to their area of interest.

Publishing blogs around topics instead of keywords is a relatively recent development in the SEO world. Google used to list search results by matching keywords to search queries, but now it’s designed to interpret the searcher’s intent and then suggest the most relevant and authoritative content. For writers and marketers, this means that blog posts don’t have to be limited to an exact keyword. Instead, blogs can be topic-based and potentially rank for a wider range of search queries.

To keep it simple, think of the topic as your overarching theme and the keyword as the specific question or subtopic you can address for your reader in that particular blog post.

2. Incorporate Relevant Keywords and Their Synonyms into Your Blog

While topics provide the structure for your content strategy, keywords still play an important role in your SEO success. Keywords are the most direct way of telling search engines what your blog is all about.

Here are the essential places to include your primary keywords to ensure your blog post is SEO-friendly:

title

This is the number-one place to include your primary keywords. Your title tag (blog headline) is the most immediate way to tell searchers (and search engines) what they can gain from clicking on that page. Descriptors that expand on your keywords, such as “2019,” “guide,” “checklist,” or “tips,” are also helpful. Pro tip: Include keywords toward the beginning of your title tag for an added SEO boost.

HTML Tags

Make sure your post title is in the code as your H1 tag. If you use a tool like HubSpot or WordPress, this is probably automatic, but double-check your template to make sure your tag is set up correctly.

Throughout your blog, use synonyms of your keyword in your subheaders, which should be tagged as <h2> or <h3>. Google is smart enough to recognize and relate synonyms of your keyword (sometimes referred to as latent semantic indexing keywords or LSIs).

Body Copy

As you write, try to incorporate the most important keywords in the first 100 words of your blog. If it’s too distracting to try and include the keywords as you go, try writing the full blog post and then going back to add keywords and relevant synonyms where they naturally fit within the body copy.

Meta Description

The meta description is the text that search engines display underneath each link to show a preview of what the page contains. Words that match the search query are bolded to help the user quickly identify the most relevant link, which is why this is the perfect place to add your most relevant keywords.

As of mid-2018, the approximate suggested length for meta descriptions was 155 characters, However, many high-ranking sites have meta descriptions of 300 characters or more. As a general rule, make sure to lead with the most important information so that users can see at a glance what your page is about, even if the description gets partially cut off.

Lastly, your meta description should be both intriguing and accurate—no one likes to be fooled by clickbait or mismatched descriptions, so make sure you are setting the right expectations and building trust.

Write SEO-Friendly Blog Posts_Meta Description

URL

One of the quickest ways to make a webpage more SEO-friendly is to simplify the URL. A great URL is short, descriptive, and readable by humans, including one or two relevant keywords. Bonus points: Google favours URLs that begin with HTTPS (meaning your website is encrypted and secure), as opposed to HTTP, as well as sites that end in common top-level domains (TLDs) such as .com, .gov, or .net.

Wondering if your URL meets all of the requirements? Here’s a helpful infographic with more details on how to optimize your URL.

mage Alt-Text

Add keywords to image alt-text or the image file name. Not only is this helpful for search engines, but it also improves your page’s accessibility. This is also the text that is displayed if your image fails to load.

Another image-related SEO tip is to use a site like Tiny PNG to compress images so that your webpage loads faster. Google favours multimedia content but penalizes slow, clunky websites. Compressing your images allows you to include great visual content while preserving the fast loading speed that users appreciate (and expect).

3. Make Sure Your Blog Is Optimized for Mobile

In 2016, Google reported that nearly four in 10 people search only on a smartphone on a given day. Since then, Google has adopted mobile-first indexing, which means it will prioritize (read and index) the mobile version of a given site rather than the desktop version in order to determine how it should rank in search results.

If your site is optimized for mobile (hint: If your site is on HubSpot, it’s automatically mobile-responsive), then inbound links to each blog post are attributed to a single URL, which increases your site’s authority.

4. Build In High-Quality Internal and External Links

Internal links connect pages of your website to one other. In each blog post, try to add two to three links to other relevant blog posts or internal pages using descriptive hyperlinked anchor text.

External links point to content that exists on a different website. Linking to relevant, trustworthy sites can boost the credibility of your post, which helps your post rank higher in search results. External links are a great way to reference relevant data or ideas in order to give your readers more information and associate your brand with other reputable sites.

Quick tip: Make sure external links are set to open in a new tab. This allows visitors to explore that site’s information without exiting or losing their place on your website. If you use HubSpot, you can simply click the hyperlink to adjust its settings.

Another way to use links is by adding CTAs that link to the next piece of content that your reader is likely to find useful as they explore this particular topic. Include an inline CTA partway through your blog, along with a more prominent CTA at the end of each post, to provide a logical and helpful next step.

5. Make Your Blog Post Easy to Skim

Help your readers jump to the most important information by using headers, subheaders, bullet points, bold text, callouts, and/or a table of contents with quick links to each section. To keep your post simple, aim for an eighth-grade reading level. Using short sentences and common terms help search engines and readers understand your content more clearly.

6. Earn Links by Making Your Blog Posts Easy to Share

Make it easy for readers to spread the word! The more your link is shared, the more trustworthy it appears to search engines. Not to mention, the more your content is shared, the greater the likelihood you have of earning backlinks, building social proof, and increasing trust in your brand.

7. When in Doubt, Write for Humans

Here’s one of the simplest ways to think about SEO: The search engine’s goal is to help people find what they’re looking for (even if the search engine makes a profit in the process).

At its core, an SEO-friendly blog is a user-friendly one, with a few added steps to help reinforce the topic for search engines so it can suggest your post to the right readers.

How to Write a Solid Business Blog That Attracts Visitors

Above all, make your content useful to your readers.

April 2, 201,9 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Here’s something you already know: Blogging is an effective way to attract visitors to your website. In fact, you may have heard awesome statistics such as the one from Statista that says that of internet users ages 19 to 29 surveyed, 47 per cent reported reading blogs regularly.

Related: Why You Should Republish Old Blog Content

The obvious conclusion is that blogging is a good business strategy to drive more traffic to your site and increase your conversions.

But, is it failing to work for your business? After all, there’s a lot of content on the web; and if your content isn’t up to par, you’ll never break through the noise. So, how do you craft blog posts that internet users will flock to?

Here are some ideas for writing solid business content that attracts viewers:

Write for your audience.

Occasionally, when business owners start blogging, their first instinct is to write about themselves. While blogging originated as a format for online journaling, that’s not what makes for a successful business blog today. On the other hand, blogging for your business isn’t all about showing off your expertise, either. Nor is using big words to make you appear smarter, or dropping in jargon users won’t understand.

Instead, you have to create content that’s useful and relevant to your target audience. According to research by journalism and electronic media professor Barbara Kaye at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, there are nine reasons readers seek out information from blogs. These include conveniently located information and information that offers guidance/opinions.

So, what kind of useful content does your own audience want to read? There are a number of ways to figure that out. First, if you’ve already started blogging, look at your analytics to see which posts are the most popular. This will give you an idea of what your audience wants. You should create detailed buyer personas to help you discover your audience's interests. Also, hang out where they hang out online to see for yourself what they’re interested in.

Not only does your content have to be useful for your audience, but it also has to be easy and enjoyable to read. So, write in a casual way, as though you’re speaking to a friend. Your audience will form a better connection with you and your business when its members can relate to you through your content. Other tips for making your content easy-to-read for your audience include:

Use headings.

Add bullet lists.

Keep paragraphs short, with lots of white space.

Insert eye-catching images.

Check out your competition.

Another important step to writing better business content is to take a look at what’s already been successful for your competition. After all, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Checking out competitors will help you discover what’s working and show you how you can incorporate something similar into your own business content for better results. Start by reading the blogs of your biggest competitors to get a feel for the type of content they’re producing.

Study the top content and figure out what you can do to create something like it. How do their headlines compare to yours? What platforms have the most engagement? What topics perform the best? Your direct competition is going after the same target audience as you, so by looking at what’s working for them, you’ll create content that brings them over to your website.

Don’t forget about SEO.

Even if your content is spectacular, you have to consider SEO when creating it or users on the web will never discover it. SEO is key to attracting visitors to your blog and website. In fact, there are over 3.5 billion searches on Google per day. So, if you want your business content to be found on the web by tons of users, you'll need to create content with search engines in mind.

Related: 4 Simple Reasons Your Blog Still Isn't Getting Traffic

First, think about how your target audience would typically find you on the web. For instance, if your company creates budgeting software, your target audience might type “best budgeting software” into the Google search bar. You'll need to add that keyword/key phrase throughout your content in a natural way, to get your blog post into the top search results for that query.

You can also determine other user-intent keywords to use by looking in the “searches related to” section at the bottom of Google search results. For example, below are the search terms related to “best budgeting software” that you could consider using:

Image Source: Google.com

Some other SEO tips for your content include:

Make the post longer, for better results.

Add internal links.

Include a keyword in your title tag.

Optimize your meta description.

Optimize your image alt text.

Remember, don’t write specifically for SEO; write great content with SEO in mind.

Related: Why We Should Focus on Attention, Not Clicks

Over to you

Start writing today! Now that you have in your back pocket these tips for writing solid business content that attracts visitors, your business blog may well become a popular spot on the web. When you’ve got hoards of people coming to check out your blog, you'll have that much more opportunity to turn those readers into leads -- and, ultimately, customers