A good alt text for an image you publish on the Internet can be the small difference that makes people find you before your competitors. So what is all the fuzz about in relation to so-called meta descriptions for images?
According to the textbook, alternative texts, or alt texts, must tell what the images contain as concretely as possible so that both the visually impaired and search engines can understand what is depicted. An extra good text stays under 125 characters, and also makes use of relevant keywords in a natural way.
Don’t think you’ll get anywhere with fancy supervision alone. BruSEO Lee here, ready to pound new learning into your head! I didn’t become an SEO authority because of my gorgeous yellow outfit. As stylish as it is, it was years of SEO terping and an eye for details, like alt texts, that built my reputation.
The difference between alt texts and meta descriptions
Meta description is a collective term for short text that summarizes what something is. The most important meta description for an image is the description of the image for search engines, also known as “alt text”. The code used to insert this text is often referred to as the alt attribute. The latter means a description that is filled in when you publish the image via platforms such as WordPress, Wix or Squarespace. Alt text is often used synonymously with meta descriptions by most people because it is the most important element for SEO.
Before I became a One-Inch Punch champion, I engaged in unlicensed SEO fighting in the darkest alleys of the Internet. I had to spread my own name to each and every new follower. And not until I had slapped thousands of photos with my merits in the hand of heaps of potential clients, did the industry start to take notice of BruSEO Lee.
In the same way, you use alt texts. These descriptions do not appear directly on the website itself, but make the images easier and understandable for search engines and others who cannot read plain text. This means that the amount of images with good meta descriptions affects the chance of appearing in Google searches, and for the indexing of content by Google.
Indexing of content at Google is explained in this One-Inch Punch. Haaaiii-YES!!
5 tips for good alt text
Google also notices if you try to sneak in keywords to get noticed. It brings back memories of my own aspirant days. Tricks never work! For every support step I took, there was a one-inch punch right in the solar plexus. Google is just as merciless, and expels anyone who risks cheating and fanfare. It is therefore important that you find a way to use keywords that are natural for the subject of the photo.
Another reason why good meta descriptions for images are important is that a lot of users do image searches on Google. In other words, it is a golden opportunity to be found in the search engines. If you forget to fill in meta information on your photos, you miss this chance for free marketing of your company online.
Good pictures may create even easier clicks than good headlines. If you work diligently to find unique images, the work is pretty much wasted if you don’t make them as searchable as possible. Make it a habit! Soon you’ll be writing ALT text as freely as I’m punching SEO tips straight into your skolt. Ka-Pow!!!
An email list is a type of database where email list one or more people’s email addresses or other information is collected. To send emails to customers about images of products or services. Email allows you to communicate directly with your customers. You must inform your customers that you are collecting their email addresses and why. You must ask customers to add them to your email list with their permission. will be
Structured data
A few years ago, Google’s search results were crammed with blue product links. This is no longer the case. Instead, “rich snippets” appear directly in the search results in the form of product images, prices, descriptions and inventory.
Rich snippets are thus the small boxes with product information that come up in relevant web searches. In other words, an online store can have its products displayed directly on Google, before the customers have even clicked onto the website.
In order for the products to appear in this way in Google searches, they must be published with “structured data”. This is a code or language written so that search engines can read and understand what the online store sells.
For example, here you can see b.young’s online store where they use structured data to display products, prices and offers on the clothes they sell. This is how it will look in the online store itself.
Structured data sounds quite technical, but it doesn’t have to be. The most used language for writing structured data is called Schema.org , and was developed by Google and Microsoft. Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or Schema Markup Generator helps you write this language correctly for your online store in a relatively simple way.
In addition, most online stores, such as Woo commerce or Shopify, have their own plugins that create form codes for your product pages.
It may take some time to generate structured data, but it is worth the goldmine for online stores. Potential customers notice your products as soon as they make a relevant search. The more space you are allocated in the Google search, the greater the chance that traffic will be directed to your online store.
Write good meta descriptions!
Meta descriptions are the small bits of text you see in Google’s search results. You can read more basic information by following the link.
For more detailed information on meta descriptions, let Bruce SEO Lee guide you through our previous blog post on the subject.
Note that the meta description has a clear call to action: ” Discover Kappa’s selection of sweatpants (..) ” clearly encourages clicking on this page.
Meta text for images is more important with Google lensGoogle lens is a function that makes it possible to use the mobile camera to identify places and objects. This recognition technology interprets what you point the camera lens at, in order to then find relevant information about the object. This can be anything from landmarks and shops, to food, sunglasses or whatever you can think of.
When the customer points the lens towards clothes and fashion items, Google’s latest updates have led to the app offering you inspiration in the form of other associated objects, and here there is an opportunity for you to appear if you have optimized your meta texts correctly.
Husk canonical tags!
Now it gets a bit technical, but no worse than most online store owners should be able to keep up with.
Canonical tags are a part of the HTML code that tells Google that one or more URLs are similar, but that one URL is designated as notes & tips for choosing the best casting the primary one for ranking. Many online stores forget to insert canonical tags or insert them incorrectly.
If you have an online store, it is not uncommon for your items to come in different sizes or colors. Without a canonical tag, Google reads the various product pages as “duplicate content”, which damages the ranking. Google wants to only show unique content that has not been copied from other websites.
How do you insert a canonical tag?
To use a canonical tag, you must first choose which page should be the primary one. It can be the most important, the one with the most links, or the most visited page.
Canonical tags are written ” rel = canonical ” and are inserted in the <head> of all other versions of the URL. That is, the header of the product pages that are not the most important. Below you can see an example for a b.young dress .
With this code, you are well on your way to improving your ranking because Google can easily understand which URLs should be prioritized.
Get links and awareness with influencers!
Link building is one of the most important factors in strengthening SEO. One way to get inbound links is to partner with influencers. Establishing a collaboration with a colorful and popular influencer can quickly prove to open the way that leads to the pot of money at the end of the Google rainbow.
Just like bloggers or users of Instagram, influencers also have many followers. With one or more posts from them, you will be exposed to aqb directory large potential customer groups.
The followers do not have the “advertising radar” on when they listen to influencers. Therefore, they are more receptive to information about new products. It gives you exposure and traffic. If Google detects more traffic to your website, it will be listed as relevant, giving the online store more authority.
In addition to good exposure, you also get a link from the influencer. But be aware that links from social media such as Facebook or Instagram are automatically marked as a “nofollow link”.
A no follow link is a signal to Google not to index the content of the link. It is therefore not registered like other links and has little to no SEO value.
How do you find the right influencer for your online store?
It often requires a bit of digging on different social media before you find a good match. If you don’t know where to start, you can see a list of Norwegian influencers here.
Measure traffic with Google Analytics
To monitor traffic to your online store, you can use Google Analytics (GA). There you can see where your visitors come from and which of your pages they have visited.
Using enhanced ecommerce tracking makes it possible to send promotion, sales data and product impressions with your page views and events in GA. Page views can be used to track product impressions. Product purchases can be used to track checkout steps and product clicks.
To track how often users complete specific actions, you can use conversion goals . A goal represents a completed action, called conversion, which contributes to the overall success of your online store. Examples of conversion goals are that a user makes a purchase (online shopping) or submits a form with contact information.
