The phrase “alt text” is short for “alternative text” which is text that is used to describe an image within an article.
You can add alt text to any image in WordPress by simply clicking on the image within the editor, then clicking Edit. You can then type whatever you’d like in the Alternative Text box.
The following screen pops up where you can write a brief description of the image. For example, I used the description “F distribution table for alpha = 0.1” to describe the image shown below:
Benefits of Using Alt Text
The benefit of using alt text for your images is that they allow your images to appear in image search results on Google. For example, if you search for “F distribution table” in Google you’ll find that the image above shows up as the top result under Images:
By using alt text for your images, you allow your articles to gain visibility in two places:
1. Regular Google search
2. Google image search
How to Write Appropriate Alt Text
As a rule of thumb, your alt text should be descriptive but not excessive. For example, the following alt text would not be descriptive enough:
- “f table”
Conversely, the following alt text would be excessive:
- “f distribution table with blue and white alternating rows and a header for both the column and the row for the table”
Instead, I used alt text that was descriptive but not excessive:
- “F distribution table for alpha = 0.1”
Keep this in mind when creating alt tags for your own images.
How to Monitor the Effectiveness of Alt Text
Your alt text is effective if it allows you to rank fairly high in Google Image search. The way to determine if your images are ranking in Google Image search is by using the Google Search Console.
For example, in the top left corner of Google Search Console I can specify the Search type to use:
By changing it from Web to Image, I can see which queries people are typing in to find my articles on Google image search:
Once I click APPLY, a new set of queries shows up:
I can see that the query “f table” lead to 521 clicks on one of my articles purely from people searching Google images.
I can also see that my images for “t distribution table”, “z table”, and “chi square distribution table” are all getting a significant amount of clicks as well purely from Google Image search.
By taking just a little extra time and adding alt text to my images in my articles, I’m able to gain a significant amount of extra search traffic just from my images.
Keep this in mind when writing articles.
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