Hey there sleepbubble,
Hope you’re well! 🙂
What you should put to your image’s alt attribute is what is the image all about. It is there for user accessibility. When the image don’t load it will be the one that will show up. It is also for search engine to tell them about the image.
My advice is create a site that target user because at the end of the day the user will be the one using your site not the google bot.
Hope it helps! 🙂
Take care,
Calvin
Thats a good point well put 🙂
I was thinking that, its just “SEO Yoasts” little warnings start to flash red. You see how it gets a little confusing for me being new.
I want to keep all the seo light green on my dashboard, but then dont want to do the recommended actions because its spammy!
But, ill be safer having a few red flags on yoast? Than to stuff all my keywords into the alt tags.
These are the yoast flags:
The keyword density is 0.7%, which is a bit low, the keyword was found 6 times.
The images on this page do not have alt tags containing your keyword / phrase.
The keyword for this page contains one or more stop words, consider removing them. Found ‘do’.
The copy scores 69.2 in the Flesch Reading Ease test, which is considered OK to read.
..and as for the stop word, thats in my keyword phrase that i researched on google, cant take it out?!, wont rank for them words otherwise?
Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)
WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
I’m surprised Yoast is recommending to do this bad practice of adding keywords into your ‘alt’ attributes. If the image is decorative then it should not have a value in the ‘alt’ attribute. If the image is not decorative and conveys information then you need to provide that information in a textual. format through the ‘alt’ attribute.
Yoast cannot possibly know whether the description you’ve provided is appropriate for the image, or lack of description, and to claim it does (by marking it green/ red) is pretty ridiculous.
Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)
WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
But, ill be safer having a few red flags on yoast?
Yes Yoast doesn’t actually do anything with the flags, and I’m quite sure Yoast is in no way affiliated with Google or any other search engine.
Ah thats great thank you! I did watch a further video on this where the source who was showing how to install yoast and set it up, came across the red flags & didnt seem to mind!
I liked your comment “Yoast is in no way affiliated with Google or any other search engine.”
I never looked from that angle!
So..if theres a photo of a sleepy lady, which “is” kinda relevant. alt=”photoofladysleeping” will do it. Otherwise leave it blank?
Once again, many thanks for your help
Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)
WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
So..if theres a photo of a sleepy lady, which “is” kinda relevant. alt=”photoofladysleeping” will do it. Otherwise leave it blank?
Yes but remember the text in the ‘alt’ value is human readable, so you should provide spaces between words and even things like apostrophes* and commas (if necessary).
If there’s text already on the page that describes what’s going on in the image, and the image is only there to make it easier to illustrate then maybe you don’t need an ‘alt’ value. You’d have to ask yourself ‘would adding “photo of a sleeping lady” add anything to the page’. Sometimes yes, sometimes you want to convey the same level of detail to both visually impaired and unimpaired people to try and get the same experience across to them.
Just a note that there is pretty much no way of detecting via an automated thing like Yoast whether images have appropriate alternative text. For example if you have an image of a cat, and you have the alternative text of “dog” then there’s no way a tool can detect that the alternative text is wrong.
Got to admit your pretty good lol : )
You’ve just cleared up what took me a night to research and find “up to date” info, and it still was wrong!
Honestly, cant thank you enough ! i was worrying over “stuffing” after reading loads of bits & pieces on it
Andrew Nevins
(@anevins)
WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support
That’s okay, it’s just disappointing to know that there are potentially many websites with keywords stuffed into images because people have been encouraged to do so.
Yes i know, something just didnt feel right about it which led me to this forum. I wanted to confirm it with a reliable source before doing anything. Anyhow, i have worked my way through them now and ill check through again just to be sure!
Hey there guys,
Hope you’re both well! 🙂
@andrew
Thanks for your very helpful input on this thread. 🙂 You really nailed it. 🙂
@sleepbubble
If you need assistance about wordpress-related issue. Please don’t hesitate to post in this forum 🙂
Take care,
Calvin
Thank You Calvin, i defiantly will, no place like the home place – at long last !
Many thanks once again
Hey I found this based on a search to try and find ways to automate getting my keywords into the alt text field. I want a lot of keywords because I want people to search for my photo and find it. I am a photographer afterall.
However there is something that seems to be missing in this conversation.
Yoast says to get your keyword into your alt text for images on a page to improve things. They are not suggesting keyword spamming at all.
Basically if you have the keyword in the alt text of an image then that image much refer to the keyword. If it does then you have another way of telling the bot that your site is relevant.
Also it is better for the end user because you are adding images that are relevant.
If the image isn’t relevant then as mentioned just ignore the fact that you don’t have one and anykeywords in the alt text. Look at it as an added bonus.
Yoast is also working to try and make your site user friendly. I see it as suggesting that you add an image that is relevant.
Hope that adds a little to the common knowledge of the world.
Take it easy 🙂
