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When is language useful for images?

photos

Photographs often form a large part of communication with clients or friends. Photographs create a certain image in our minds which is connected to feelings evoked by a text. Hence, a lot of documents we receive at Simply Translate from our clients include pictures and photos. The same goes for online documents.

For online documents it is important to pay attention to a number of elements. By translating the image details, you can improve both your SEO position and search results. It concerns the following four elements:

  • Title
  • Alt text
  • Description
  • Caption

#1 Give your photo a good title

Most of the cameras give photos a generic name like 000001.jpeg. This name does not say anything about what is in the picture and therefore does not increase the relevance of your website nor the significance of your image.

When you just publish a photo or a picture with the generic name on your website, you ignore the regulations of the Google Image Publishing Guidelines. Google advises you to provide your image with a title that is related to the topic of the picture.

Although the Google Algorithm is already quite advanced, it cannot verify titles and the content of the photo. This means that the algorithm looks at the text descriptions of the images in order to evaluate if the image is relevant to the search result.

Obviously it does not sound like an interesting job to rename all your images. However, when you do this, it will definitely increase your search results.

#2 Remember to fill in the Alt Text

If you want to post a picture on your website, the CMS system asks you to fill in various fields. If you have not been doing this, it is wise to take a look at the multiple benefits of completing these fields. I begin with the first field, the Alt Text.

Google declares that its algorithm checks for data filled in in the Alt Box to assess whether the content is relevant for a search or not. This means that you have to fill in the Alt Text in order to be found by Google’s spiders.

Moreover, the Alt Text has a more in-depth meaning. Alt Text is intended for users who cannot access images easily, such as people who cannot see well. Another reason why Alt Text is important, is that it is useful for people with a bad or slow Internet connection, or those having problems with downloading the images.

It is also of importance not to place keywords in the Alt Text. It will help you to avoid confusion. The best way to fill in the Alt Text is to write exactly what you see in a picture.

The ideal Alt Text is 16 words long. It will help people who cannot see your image, or those who cannot download it, by informing them about the image’s content.

#3 The Description

The next part is the Description. This text can be displayed on the attachment page for your image.

Does an image serve as an addition to a SEO written website? Then make sure that the keyword you used for the page text occurs at least once in your Description. You should not use the keyword too often because that could harm the readability of the sentence. This text is visible for the visitors of your website, so make sure that a good description of your image is being displayed.

#4 The Caption

The Caption of photographs may seem unnecessary. However, it still is very important that it is present. Visitors that briefly go through your website and cannot see the images can be triggered to look at your caption. This will increase the average time spent on the website and will decrease the number of people leaving your page. This important adjustment will help those with a high bounce rate (those that leave your web page immediately) and cause an incentive for them to come back. Do you not have a caption integrated yet? In that case the high bounce rates will negatively affect your SEO position.

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