Optimizing Images: How to fill Alt and Title attributes

Lively content always looks better than solid sheets of text. And one of the easiest ways to liven it up is to dilute it with illustrations. And for search engines, SEO of images is also important. This includes writing Alt and Title attributes, compression ratio, file format and closest text to images.

It's worth separating the two purposes of images in articles:

• First, they visually divide the text into manageable fragments, visually revealing the theme of the narrative.
• Second, they increase the material's ranking according to search engines.

And here's the point — search engines don't like pictures that are irrelevant to the subject of the article at all. In particular, in 2024 it won't be difficult for a computer to recognize the subject and content of images on a site using neural networks.

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But what can you do when there are almost no relevant pictures for the subject of the article? Complement it with some illustrations from photostocks or your library, the main thing — feel the measure.

Be sure to wrap illustrations not related to the material in the tag <figure></figure>. This way, the robots will understand that such an image should be considered isolated from the text. But don't use <figure> for actual pictures on the subject of the material. Otherwise, the page will look like empty text to the robot and this will have a negative impact on the SEO promotion of the site.

Taking someone else's pictures is bad, but do search engines know about it? Of course, they do. But there is a nuance. If no one used the image before you on the Internet — then it's unique. You can check it up on Google or Yandex, or on the TinEye site.

332 repeats found

The picture is unique

Pictures accentuate attention and can inspire a customer to buy or order your product. In particular, a site with enough images will always look more attractive than competitors with solid text. This is especially true for sales pages.

The alt attribute is an extra line that describes the image. People only need it if the picture did not load. Then Alt will be shown instead — at least people will know what they were supposed to see.

Alt should match the content of the illustration as closely as possible. On the site, the img tag code with the alt attribute filled in looks like this:
alt ="google site SEO analysis">

For example, if there is a well-known brand of car in the picture, it is rational to mention it along with a brief characteristic. Also, pay attention to the correct text environment of the picture — these are the nearest lines before and after the image. They are closely watched by search robots, so they should be as relevant as possible to their illustration.

Title provides you more information about the image. It makes it easier to understand the essence of the picture, the author's idea. To see the text in the attribute, just hover over the image.

A title can increase website conversion, if, for example, you can insert a motivating call to action. By the way, note that the title attribute is only visible from a computer. Although search engines do not include its content, content with a title attribute becomes much livelier.

1. There is no need to make it too long, 4–5 words are enough.
2. Don't make the alt attribute and the title on the page duplicate in the title.
3. You can use keywords, but avoid overspamming.
4. Don't put the same keywords in every image in a row.
5. Attribute text should be relevant to the image.

The name of the image file itself is also essential. In fact, Google's image search works mostly by file names and alt attributes specified on the page. So be sure to rename the faceless IMG3493.jpg to the easily recognized site-page-analysis.jpg. In addition, the text depicted in the illustrations is also successfully recognized, but does not affect site ranking as a whole, but only the individual image search.

All images except the main one — which is visible on the first screen — should be connected via lazy (delayed) loading. To achieve this, prescribe the loading attribute ="lazy". Also, use modern .webp format, or at least.jpg with good compression. Or if you want a transparent background, you should also compress the.png file format.

To compress a picture online, use popular sites like CompressPNG, TinyPNG and iloveimg.

Choose quality and relevant images for your website pages. Use delayed loading, compress images well, and pay attention to their text environment. In addition, don't forget about SEO-friendly filenames written in transliteration.

Always fill the alt and title attributes with relevant information. This will help people with low vision who use voice reading text, among other things. It will also make it easier for search engines to index your photos and site pages.

You can check all images on the page, their alt attributes and find duplicates by analyzing on liftwebsite.com.