Why Adding Alt Tag Is Important When Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines

Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! use algorithms to determine which websites are worthy of being listed in their search results. These algorithms work by looking at multiple factors, including how relevant your website is to the search query, how many pages you have on your site, how unique your content is, and how many backlinks to other sites you have.

These algorithms are pretty complex, and even the best SEOs in the world can’t really predict how the rankings of websites will change from one day to the next. On top of that, the algorithms are constantly being updated and improved, making it even more difficult to keep up.

So, how can you optimize your website to ensure that it ranks well in search engines? Well, the answer is simple: by adding alt tags to images on your site.

What are alt tags?

Alt tag is short for alternative text, which is just a plain, simple sentence that describes what the image is and what it’s about.

Why are alt tags important?

Alt tags are important because they can help your website rank better in search engines. People now often conduct image searches as well. The key to getting good rankings is having an abundance of quality content about a specific topic. Search engines use this content to determine how relevant your website is to the search query typed into Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or any other engine.

For example, if you have a page on your site about dog breeds, you would want to upload images of different breeds and alt tag them with keywords related to the page like "dog breeds." If you don’t have an image for a specific keyword, it's ok! You can also include text in your alt tag that describes the image. This makes it possible for people looking for something like "dog breeds" to find your website, no matter whether they had typed "dog breeds" or "french bulldog," both of which might be popular queries at any given time.

How to add alt tags to images on your website

If you want to rank highly for a search term, be sure that all of the images on your website have descriptive alt tags. In order for an image to be relevant and useful in a search engine’s ranking algorithm, it needs to have a brief but complete description of what’s in the picture.

To enter an alt tag description in Google Sites, click the image in Google Sites, choose three dots, and select 'add an alt text'.

Bottom line

Adding alt tags to images on your site can be the difference between getting listed in the top search results and not. The purpose of adding alt tags to images is so that search engines can tell which website is most relevant to a particular query. When you add an alt tag, like "a black labrador retriever," for an image of a dog, Google will know that the image belongs with websites about dogs and rank those sites higher in their listings than other websites that don't have descriptive text for their images. Basically, when you add alt tags, you're helping search engines better understand what's on your website and show it off accordingly.