For further reach on your traffic and visitors, are you considering the images used in your blog posts? A lot of people think that they are but they’re missing the full potential available. So, with this post, let’s talk about alt tags and Google’s Image Search.

It’s typical for a lot of bloggers to place images in every single post. I do it. Sometimes I even do more than one. Images are good to use in that they give your visitors something visual to what the post is about. Using the idea that a lot of your visitors aren’t actually readers, images slow down the visitor and catch their eye to draw them in.

For most bloggers, images are vital to their overall game plan when it comes to traffic and visitors. But, are you missing the mark or not making the most of it?

Before I go further, let me say here that you’ll need to have a Google Webmaster account to follow along with me. And if you don’t have an account with Google, now is the time to get one. Not only do they provide powerful webmaster tools but analytics tools as well. A must use for serious webmasters!

Opt-In to Image Search

Our very first step is to ensure that you have opted into Google’s Enhanced Image Search. This is a matter of a single checked box.

1. Login into your webmaster tools account
2. Select the domain name that you’d like to opt in with
3. Click on tools from the left-hand side menu
4. Select “enable enhanced image search”
5. Check box to opt in to enhanced image search

By opting into the enhanced image searching you’re allowing Google to index the images used on your site. This means that you’ll have visitors that hit your site straight from the Google image search resulting in more organic searches to your site.

But opting into the enhanced image search is just not enough. You have to make sure that you’re properly tagging the images that you use on your site so that they can be found. And this is where alt tags come in!

Inserting the Alt Tag

An alt tag uses key descriptive words to describe the picture that you have inserted. I want to show you how to place the alt tag inside of your image code string.

Unlike formatting a link for the no follow tag, we’ll be formatting an image for both an alt and title tag. Both are vital to every single image you use on your website (in or out of a post).

Let’s focus on post images.

I’d first like to recommend that you use FTP to upload your images to your hosting account. Uploading images in the dashboard is great and will get the job done. However, to properly insert the alt tag with your image code, you need to actually use code view. WordPress, no matter what others have told you, does not insert an alt tag into your image code string.

It’s commonly believed that when an image is uploaded in the WordPress dashboard, by filling out the “description” something will happen with your alt tags. This is not true.

Anything placed in the “description” box when uploading in the dashboard will not appear in the code output for the image in your blog post:

As you can see in the image above, filling out the line that reads “Title” will place a title tag in your code output for the image that you’re uploading. However, let me say it again, nothing will be used from the “description” box so do not fill this out thinking that you’re providing the best optimization for search engines on your images. You’re not and this is where I believe some bloggers are missing the mark.

Choosing to hand code your images in or not, you still need to use the code view of the what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor when writing a post.

This is easier than you think!

I’m going to insert the banner for I’m Blogging That

To do this I first need to code the image’s location within my hosting account:

<img src="http://www.imbloggingthat.com/images/125-ibt-png.png" />

That string of code alone will insert my image into my post. But I haven’t done anything to optimize this for search engines (or screen readers). On to the next step, add your title tag:

<img src="http://www.imbloggingthat.com/images/125-ibt-png.png" title="I'm Blogging That" />

OK, getting warmer but for Google Image Search, we need to have that alt tag so that Google has something for their bots to know what the image is! Now, here comes the alt tag:

<img src="http://www.imbloggingthat.com/images/125-ibt-png.png" title="I'm Blogging That" alt="I'm Blogging That" />

Easy enough?

By inserting the alt tag into your image’s code output you’re telling Google’s bots what your image is. A bot can’t see the image but by giving the alt tag attribute to your image’s code, you’re telling them what it is. This is a good chance to use keyword rich information. Don’t go overboard, you don’t want to be penalized but do make sure that you’re being descriptive to what the image is so that once indexed, you’re actually found by your image.

That’s it… you’ve optimized for images. Keep at it, make sure you’re using BOTH alt and title tags, every single time.

For more on alt tags, check out Matt Cutt’s video on YouTube talking about the importance of alt tags.