You may add alt text (alternative text) to website photos at your discretion. Alt text is typically applied to photos for usability — that is, to assist website visitors who are unable to see the image.
The aim of this post is to discuss how image alt text can help with SEO. You may have come across SEO advice that stated that all photos on your website should have optimised alt text. This isn’t always the case, however. Often it’s a good idea to optimise picture alt text, and other times it’s not.
Will Optimizing Image Alt Text Drive Sales Leads or E-Commerce Revenue?
This is the basic question for deciding whether to optimize image alt text as part of your SEO campaign. In order to answer this question, you need to understand the path the user will take:
- Google Search or Google Image Search is the starting point.
- Users will enter keywords describing products they wish to purchase.
- Google will return images.
- Users may choose to click on your images and visit your website.
The image alt text is worth optimising if the optimised image will push Google users to your website and if those users convert by placing an order or creating a sales lead. Otherwise, your SEO efforts should be focused elsewhere.
How Do You Determine If You Should Optimize Your Image Alt Text?
Several factors come into play in sizing up whether image alt text will generate conversions. The first step is to evaluate your business type and what keyword possibilities exist for the images in question.
- Your company should sell products (not services).
- Your products need to be unique enough (you don’t have many competitors selling an identical product).
- People need to search for your products using keywords that drive conversions.
- There needs to be monthly search volume in Google for these keywords.
Consider a company that sells things like “golf club delivery boxes” and “horizontal packing devices.” These businesses sell goods that can be identified using relevant keywords that have a high search volume and lead to conversions.
On the other hand, if your website just uses stock photography, optimising image alt text is pointless. A website that sells commodity items is in the same boat.
The Proper Role of Image Alt Text Optimization in an SEO Campaign
When there’s a chance to link your product images to targeted organic traffic that turns into sales leads or e-commerce revenue, image alt text optimization will help with SEO. Get In touch with our SEO Agency today!