It’s important to know how to effectively use images to drive traffic and catch attention. There are some guidelines on how to use your image correctly and we will be talking about linking images and alt tags, which play an important role in using your image correctly.
Linking your image.
If you are using a CMS and you post through their platform, then you’ll notice that most toolbars have tools to help you with linking your images. Simply upload your image and enter your URL in the appropriate bar.
If you are using basic HTML then you would have to go a bit deeper and know how to code. Adding the following HTML will display an image with your link.
<a href=”http://www.jobvine.co.za/what-does-it-take-to-get-a-job-at-google/”>
<img src=”http://www.jobvine.co.za/Content/images/jobvine-infographic.png” alt=”Google infographic” width=”600″ height=”3948″ />
HTML explained:
The <a href=”http://www.seoblog.co.za/”> is the link that the visitor will be directed to when he clicks on the image
The <img src=”http://www.jobvine.co.za/Content/images/jobvine-infographic.png” alt=”Google infographic” width=”600″ height=”3948″ />
is where the image can be found so that your website can locate and display it. The alt tag is a descriptive tag for Google search results and the width and height tags are used to customize the size of your image.
What is an alt tag?
Alt tags are used to give a description to Google regarding the image you are using on your site.
Alt tags define different tags (img, area, input and applet) and it’s a common misconception that alt tag is the image tag. For the purpose of this blog, however, and since everybody knows it as alt tag, (and I don’t want to be seen as being nitpicky) I’m sticking to alt tag.
Difference between an alt attribute and the title attribute for images.
A good example was made by Searchenginejournal.com on how to define between the two attributes:
“Alt text is meant to be an alternative information source for those people who have chosen to disable images in
their browsers and those user agents that are simply unable to “see” the images. It should describe what the image is about and get those visitors interested in seeing it.
Without an alt text an image will be displayed as an empty icon: 
Image titles (and the element name speaks for itself) should provide additional information and follow the rules of the regular title, meaning that it should be relevant, short, catchy and concise. In FireFox and Opera it pops up when you hover over an image:
”
How to effectively use alt tags:
- Try and make a full description in your alt text. Use “Monkey juggling balls with one hand” instead of just using keywords such as “Monkey,juggling,balls,hand”.
- If the image is a template or a layout image then it is recommended to leave the alt text blank.
- If the image is a product then use the product name as a description, as people are more likely to search “cactus juice” than your company’s keyword for a specific product.
- When using an image as a link, enter the title name of the page as the alt text
Google and WC3 give different opinions on the alt tag preference
WC3
WC3 states that if the image is very informative you should create two alt tags. The one alt tag (“img tag”) should have a short description and a longdesc link tag should direct you to a more detailed description of the image.
Example:
<BODY> <P>
<IMG src="seoblog.gif" alt="seoblog logo" longdesc="www.seoblog.co.za/about">
</P> </BODY>
I went to Google’s official blog and sourced their image and found the following URL
<img alt="The Official Google Blog - Insights from Googlers into our products, technology
and the Google culture"
src="http://www.google.com/googleblogs/images/headers/ogb_header_full.png">
Google only uses the short alt tag to describe their images. Upon further research I found that Google sees the longdesc attribute as a hidden link technique, which is considered spam.
So the big question is, do you follow Google standards or WC3 standards. Most likely the Google standards since they have a massive share of search engine visitors.
The other question is then, how does this affect the “ground rules” of WC3 if everybody follows Google’s guidelines anyway?
DESCRIPTIVE ALT TAGS
As always, I went to the experts concerning this matter and who better to listen to than Matt Cutss who is part of the Google search quality team and specialises in SEO issues.
In conclusion I believe webmasters ignore alt text too readily. Customers are exposed to graphical information every single day and colourful images are more attractive than text. I’ve found myself typing in “Character from Mass Effect” rather than using the web search (text) because I recognise the image even if I couldn’t remember the name.
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