Currently, images are becoming useful elements of websites. WordPress has provided several ways of adding images to web content, and almost every web publisher can do it in a matter of minutes. However, it’s important to take your time when filling in the “Attachment Details” of an image. Specifically, make the best use of the Alt Text and Title tags of your images. Jason Adler, the Semalt Customer Success Manager, reminds that these two attributes determine the communicative value of the image and its ranking on SERPs. They also improve user engagement and thus help to build a good reputation for your site.
What is image Alt Text and image title in WordPress?
Alt Text, or alternate text, is added to the image details to act as a placeholder in case the image takes long to load or does not load at all. Instead of the visitor seeing nothing (which can create bad user experience), they see the description of the image – the Alt Text.
Alt Text is made not only for users but also for search engines. When a search engine like Google is crawling websites, it cannot read images, but it can read an image’s Alt Text. If this tag is optimized, the search engine gives the image and thus the website a better rank in search results.
Image title does a lot of good to your site too. When you move the mouse pointer over an image, you may notice that a certain descriptive text pops up. That is the image title, and it provides a better understanding of the image. More importantly, the title helps readers with visual impairments to understand the image. Normally, these visitors use screen-reading software to read content on websites. When the software reaches where the image is, it reads out the title of the image for the user. If no title has been provided the screen reader doesn’t return anything and moves to the next portion of the content that it can read.
Adding image Alt Text to an image in WordPress
There are two ways you can use to add Alt Text to your images. You have a chance to add the text when uploading the image using the built-in media uploader provided by WordPress. The other method involves opening the media library, finding the image and clicking the Edit link located below that image.
Adding image title in WordPress
It’s important to note that the term “image title” in WordPress may be used to mean two different things. When uploading an image using WordPress media uploader, you’ll see a title field. The text you enter into this field is called a title, but it’s used by WordPress media library to display the list of images and other media files in your library. However, this is not the title that visitors will see when the mouse pointer rests on the image.
Here’s how to add the image title you want users to see:
If you use the visual post editor, you can click on the image and then the edit button. In the popup screen that appears, click on Advanced Options, and you are given an option to add the title attribute.
In case you can write HTML code, use the Text editor to add the title attribute.
Both the image Alt Text and title are important for the site. Use them to give your images and the entire site some personality. Ensure all your WordPress images are well-labeled with optimized Alt Texts and titles. You will push your site a step ahead towards better ranking on SERPs, and it will be more user-friendly.