How to properly use the “alt” text attribute

Nowadays, it is very easy to use the advantages of Internet. Anyone with basic knowledge can set up a website. It’s enough to use the services of a CMS platform as Word Press and in few minutes another blog is launched. It’s true that this revolution brings many disadvantages, but, overall, there are more many positive aspects than negative ones. The information travels with a speed superior to the light and it isn’t a surprise to find out what the President Obama said from Europe first, rather than from SUA.

In the online medium it is still valid that an image speaks better than a thousand words and the supreme prove is the gazillions of pictures uploaded. Due to the last improvements, the process of uploading an image is elementary in spite of the fact that it’s very important. As you probably know, the bots of the search engines can’t “read” images so in order to take them into account the text description is vital. Used properly, the optimization of the images may represent a good source of traffic from Google Images. You should be aware that the search engine optimization is as important as the design of a website. Ten years ago when the websites weren’t very numerous it wasn’t too important, but now we have countless of online presences hence to be in the first position is vital to obtain more visitors.

Reasons to use the alt text in your website

A special factor that really plays a capital role in optimizing an image is the “alt” attribute; some SEO specialists say that the algorithms of the search engines fail to take it into account but I am still in doubt. Anyway, the algorithm is secret and all these are only presumptions, but clearly using the “alt” attribute isn’t wrong.
Another reason to use the alt text is due to the accessibility necessities: it sounds strange but there are people who are using browsers that don’t render images or they have sight problems and chose to not have uploaded images in the websites they are visiting.
Concisely, there are two major causes to use the alt attribute:
-because of the possibility of improving the position in the searches of engines;
-because of the rules implying the creation of more accessible websites.

What is the alt attribute?

“Alt” is an attribute of the tags

and but it could be associated with and . It has the main role of describing the non-textual entities; the spiders sent to crawl all the websites can’t access your pictures of your sweet daughters but once you specify in the alt text “Deborah-1-years-old” they will know the age of your child. The idea is simple: with alt you help search engines to properly index the images. It’s a real help probably for your oldest relatives that can’t clearly see/understand the images but hovering the mouse on a picture may barely read/listen to and understand that there is, i.e. your daughter.
Many people use the collocation “alt tag” that is an often misunderstanding. A tag is sequence of code that has a role in rendering a page while an attribute is something that specifies the limitations or the characteristics of the tag.” text here” isn’t a valid code but “img src=””…”” alt=””explanation” ” is frequently and correctly used. Please be carefully and use correctly the terms, clearly “alt” is an attribute and not a tag.
How to use the alt text

1.Be explicatory

An alt attribute must explain what the image represents. An unclear explanation/description is nothing more than a reason to get anxious and visit other websites. Keep in mind: the alt text must be simple, easily understandable, and explicatory.

2.Be brief

There shouldn’t be tons of lines explaining a thing from the beginning, but enough to make anyone understand what it’s about. Always put yourself in the posture of a handicapped visitor, would you resist having a 200+ words explanation of an image?

3.Be contextual

In order to be more efficient and to respect the previous tips, a wise designer will try to benefit from the context, to offer a better explanation in the alt text. Don’t be too extremist by being very contextual in such a manner to stupefy people. Pay attention to the fact that there are lots of people who don’t read the entire post, they read just the needed paragraph. The perfect solution is definitely rather art than science, hence the experience is very useful.

4.Don’t cheat search engine bots

A big mistake of website creators is to use black SEO hat methods, it’s only a matter of time until the spiders of the search engines will detect any incorrect actions and will quickly punish these. My piece of advice is simple: be honest and don’t use any unfair solution, it’s quite immoral to use the alt text with commercial or advertising purposes.
As you see, it’s not rocket science. Anyone may use the alt attribute, and any small mistake of a beginner may be neglected if the rest of the website is accessible. Internet is amazing and probably is the new best friend of the human being so why shouldn’t it be useful to anyone of us?