Pictures Worth 1000 Words or 1 Keyword

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps that is true for many people, but it really isn’t applicable for the search engines. The picture here suggests a family on vacation, visiting a huge historic castle on a sunny day. It might cause you to wonder who the people are (my family), why they are there (summer vacation), and where the castle is located (Trim Castle in Co. Meath, Ireland).

Your website visitors are happy to see images and graphics on your site and they are a big part of the reason why they stay to read the copy. When it comes to search engines, however, the image is almost invisible unless you use an alt tag.  An alt tag stands for ‘alternate text’and is essentially a label you apply to the image when you upload it to your site. For the most effective SEO, include your keywords in the alt tag.  If there are references to the image elsewhere on your site, create an anchor text link to the image and ensure that it includes your keywords as well.

So keep loading up beautiful pictures to your website for the enjoyment of your visitors. Just make sure to add your alt tags to get them working harder for you!