Image Optimisation: Importance of Alt Text

Importance of image optimisation in local strategy

Alt text is 'alternative text' - the text inside the alt tags  alt=""  "alt text".
Also called The Alt Attribute.
The value of the alt attribute is an author-defined text

The alt text serves as an alternative text on a webpage to describe an image content; which cannot be easily interpreted by search engines / Google.

The Visual Web in Local Search Results

The alt text is good for the user journey and therefore good for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In this increasing time of the 'visual web', where images outrank words for engagement, where 5% of all search is image related, 10% of all searches are via Google Image search, where images show up on maps in local searches, on Panoramio and Google Earth, on local search 'carousel' for locations frequently mentioned on the web like museums etc, where photo posts on Facebook get 39% more interaction and one of the most popular activities on G+ is the upload and sharing of images and tweets with images have a better chance of being retweeted, where 16 billion photos have been shared on Instagram, where Pinterest image pins deliver on average two site visits and six pageviews...then it makes sense to add some helpful details to images. Image alt text in turn helps to make the web content meet W3C web standards for accessibility - to ensure web access is available to people whether or not they have impairments of one sort or another.

Image Optimisation
If you imagine a website visitor is reading a web page on a screen reader; the visitor will learn what is on the page from a number of triggers, such as the keyword rich URL, the page title / title tag and the header title / header tags. These tags are used to optimise a web page and therefore give an indication to the visitor and the search engines about what the page content will contain; the body text holds most of the page content detail.

An image is a more attractive, emotional and memorable way of telling the story within the page and body text. However, the search engines need a written description about the image content and the image location to outline what role, or relevance the image has on the page. Ideally, the alt text would be a short, seamless piece of text that is part of the body text. We do not actually have to describe in detail what is in the picture. It is more important to reference what is in the image, or to describe the scene within the picture, as if it is part of the sentence before and part of the sentence after the image. This way, the image is explained 'in context' to the rest of the copy.

Logo Optimisation
If the image has no contextual purpose on the page, like a logo in the header for instance, then it is acceptable to leave the alt text blank, as the user journey is not enhanced by knowing the logo is there and the image name would have already identified it as a logo. In some circumstances, logo optimisation can be used if the logo design also incorporates a strap line, or a geographical location, rather than just a graphic logo design.

Image Ranking Factors
An optimised image at the top of the page naturally gives the search engines another trigger to understand what is on the page. Being above the fold gives the image some SEO prominence and makes the page visually appealing. Google determines that these tags are of benefit for the end user, in making their journey around the website as easy as possible, therefore Google will rank a website based on the optimised content.

As with all the optimisation tags used on a web page, the alt text, (sometimes incorrectly call alt tags) allows for some of the competitive topic keywords to be used, these can also be geo-located if it is relevant to the context of the page. It is imperative that no keyword stuffing is used; this is considered spamming and obviously does nothing for the user's journey.

Alt Text and Captions
As a guideline, the recommended maximum length of alt text is 125 characters. It is recommended not to embed important text in images because as mentioned, the search engines need to know what is in the image. Captions and title can be used to help describe the image but these do not always show on a mobile, whereas the alt text will work in all situations.

Google Search by Image
We used to say that Google was blind when it came to images but that has all changed. The Google  'search by image' features a camera in the image search box which allows users to do a reverse image search and discover all sorts of content that's related to a specific image..

Using the local image optimisation symbol above, we dragged the Jpeg in to the Google image search box. Google tries to interpret the image and return visually similar images.

Drag an image into an image search and Google interprets the image content

Some images are more easily interpreted than others and Google will return webpages with a similar image; it may be the same image but the size differs on different webpages, such as the Keytek Locksmith Engineer image below.

Google improves image search and interprets image content to match to web pages with similar images

Impressively, Google Image search is able to match some image content quite accurately. The Southern Contracts News article image example below was interpreted as a UK Map.

Google can interpret and match some images quite well

Google is increasingly improving how it clusters multiple images, how it identifies duplicate images, determines which image makes the most sense. Image ranking is performed on many signals but giving the search engines as much detail as possible about the image is certainly worthwhile; each image is an important link back to the website hosting that image.

Image Optimisation Developments
The value associated with image optimisation and geo-locating images is always changing. In 2012 we were trying to get our clients to seriously think about image optimisation and how to use tools like Picasa to manage their images; now it seems very natural for businesses to embrace image optimisation.

Give us a call if you want to discuss our approach to image optimisation, prioritising the best image for image search via responsive design, image-specific tags for image sitemaps in webmaster tools, image scaling for apps, adaptive images, cross-browser, using CSS, appropriate image file sizes for your requesting devices, schema.org image markup, rich snippets, geo-targeting, image search reporting in analytics, accurate image resolution for smartphones or any other consideration you may have for using images to increase web traffic.

Author: Fiona Anderson

Picasa, Blogger, image optimisation and SEO

Rocktime has talked previously about Picasa as a photo sharing platform ‘Photosharing: Flickr versus Picasa’, in extension to that post, we would like to contribute some knowledge with regards to how Picasa integrates with your blogger account. Reason being, when using Blogger as your blogging platform, as we do here at Rocktime, you may not realise it but every image you upload through blogger goes onto your Picasa Web account.

With any free photo sharing web account, like Picasa, it is worth making sure about storage capacity. Picasa Web Albums offer a 1GB size limit, however, the additional charges for Google storage are fairly minimal. Not every single image you upload contributes to the total storage; images under a certain size will not count towards your 1GB limit. Furthermore, having a Google+ account will actually increase what you can upload for free, without taking it out of your 1GB limit. Google+ offers unlimited storage for photos uploaded in Google+, which are automatically resized to 2048 pixels. Videos up to 15 minutes in length are also free. G+ is almost turning into an image archiving facility.

An alternative is to use your own image hosting, uploading images to your domain, or using another online image hosting service, and then direct linking to the image through your blog post.

If you want to conserve space on your Picasa Web Albums account, another thing to look out for  is to manage duplicate images, which is an issue that sometimes crops up when uploading images to Picasa from your PC.

This is due to the way Picasa scans your computer for images; if you have the same image stored in a different file, Picasa might choose to treat it as two separate images. If you’re making use of the Import button to bring photos from your computer into Picasa, check the ‘Exclude Duplicates’ option at the bottom of the page. This will force Picasa to check for duplicate entries by comparing factors such as size and names etc, and hopefully remove the likelihood of any copies of images being uploaded.

Last year Google wrote some recommendations for improvement with the Google Picasa and Blogger integration which links to the Google Picasa Help Forum if more assistance is needed.

There are many other features from Picasa that help to keep a blog engaging, such as fast Picasa Web photo viewer, manager and uploader for Android devices - called Picasa Mobile -, which was designed to facilitate viewing and managing your online Picasa albums and photos.

Google Picasa Web Albums recently added a range of new image editing effects like Boarders, Vignette, Duo-tone, and more effects similar to editing in Adobe Photoshop, Irfan view and PaintNet photo editing software, which helps to make the photos look more professional.

There are numerous SEO advantages of optimising images in Picasa, like the ability to geo tag images, which adds geo-location details to help your local search engine rankings, high-quality backlinks pointing to your website, better page load time from reduced bandwidth and storage reduction, good search engine presence for your images, a library of images that can be shared socially, and you can even embed Slideshows in blog post from Picasa.

One feature that should never be overlooked with any images is the actual image optimisation process. We will write a more detailed brief on this in the coming weeks. Generally though, the rule of thumb is to make sure that the image is named accurately, that the image contains some of the keywords relevant to the blog or content of the article and that Google is given all the contextual and any localisation details about the image. This way, the chance of the image being found on Google Images is greatly improved. Every image on Google Images is a possible link back to a website and helpful to users. All good for user journey, mobile viewing, relevant content, sharing opportunities and SEO.  This can all be done in Picasa before uploading the image. Picasa allows that image to be shared in a number of ways, which is great for running marketing campaigns.

Once the images are uploaded to the blogger blog, it takes just a few moments to go into the HTML or right click the image in 'compose' mode and add the alt text for the image. Alt text, or alternative text of an image, tells the user about the image depending on the context in which the image is used.  Alt is not a tag, or a place to stuff keywords, it is an 'attribute'. Basically, search engines cannot crawl images, they index the text part attached with it, so the alt text is an alternative for non-visual browsers.
Images play a massive role in mobile, directories, user reviews, blogger engagement, social networks, websites, press coverage and organic inbound marketing link building campaigns.

If you’re interested in learning more about Google updates, services or how Rocktime helps businesses to use image optimisation as part of good practice for SEO, Accessibility and an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy, then please ask one of our Flashlight Search Marketing Team  about publishing your content to a larger audience, it is something we are passionate about and have been talking to our clients about for the last 2 or 3 years. Check out the blog we wrote back in 2010 about Good practice on adding images to Blogs.

Please get in touch with Rocktime Sales Team to arrange a meeting or leave us a comment below about how image optimisation can make a difference.


Author: Fiona Anderson

Good practice on adding images to Blogs

Rocktime runs a number of social media campaigns for our clients. With the tech media reporting that blog readership is increasing, supported by our own observations that blogs are a good way to drive traffic to our client websites, we are increasingly advising our customers to set up their own corporate or brand blogs.

Another advantage of creating a blog is to improve Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) results:, back in June 2008 Hitwise reported that on average 27% of a blogs page views come as referrals from a horizontal search engine, as blogs get cached in search results.

Generally we run the blogs in-house on behalf of the client using a ‘hand holding’ approach for a period of 3 – 6 months. We begin by creating blog post plans around topical subjects and then, when there is an in-house resource, ease the client slowly into taking on the blog themselves.

After speaking with bloggers (via social media networking) we understand that a problem area which blocks their posting is adding images to their blogs. They ask questions on how to correctly upload images, where to source images, the legal implications involved in using a copyrighted image which is not their own and how to crop and resize. They are also concerned about file sizes, based on Google’s recent Algo update.

In an attempt to help the majority of bloggers and our blogging clients thanks to Foz our Creative Developer, we have created this Q&A blog post outlining a good practice guide to adding images to websites.

To kick things off we would firstly like to recommend Paint.Net for non-designers for those who may find Photoshop to be too complicated. Paint.Net is a free image editor which is more advanced than Microsoft Paintbrush and has all the essentials for your image editing. Basic features include crop, rotate, resize images, adjust colours, adjust file size and create collages; there are a variety of other useful tools within Paint.Net, but we will let you discover these as your confidence in using the image editor grows. For now we will focus on the basics on using Paint Net.

An alternative option is the snipping tool software available within Microsoft Office (Windows Vista, Ultimate) which allows the user to crop images straight from the screen and save to clipboard. Within the snipping tool softeware are also a few simple tools available under options, allowing you to email image, add a border etc.

There are a number of image libraries available, Rocktime recommend iStock Photo for low cost but great quality images. Should you need extra advice on finding and using then give us a call.

Foz (Web Designer) answers your questions on online images

Q: I have downloaded Paint.Net. What do I do now?

A: You need to open up a copy of the image within the software. If you’ve saved a copy to your computer go FILE > OPEN and browse to open the image from it’s saved location.
If you’ve found an image online that you want to use, make a mental note to check copyright issues (which we will examine later), then:

1. Right click to copy it. Click File New (this will open a blank image the same size as the image you have stored in your clipboard)

2. Paste it into the white background

3. It is good practice to size the image for your blog so:
Go to IMAGE > RE-SIZE

Always make sure that ‘Maintain aspect ratio’ box is ticked to ensure that your image doesn’t get stretched or squashed (it will generally be clicked on default and appears under highlighted By Absolute Size)

Q: How can I create a square image to fit into social networks?

Ask Rocktime to produce one for you or use the Paint Net crop tool (box with dashes) and pick out a square by dragging the box and keeping eye on bottom left hand corner, which highlights the dimensions of the image. When the two dimension measurements are equal you then have a perfect square.

Go to your image – Crop to selection then you can resize your square to the size as specified by the social network. If your image started off life as a photograph then save as a JPG; if it is a graphic or text image then save as a PNG. Do not worry about the other compression formats.
When you save as a file type it will then give you a preview box of the quality of the image and show the file size. You can reduce file size by reducing the quality - sometimes by reducing the image quality by just 10% the file size can be cut by more than half!

Q: What would you class as a high file size? I noted a few social networks say an uploaded image can’t be larger than a certain size?

A: The main consideration is what the total file size of the page will be. If you have a really sharp image that’s very large the chances are that the file size is going to be pretty big. If this is the only image on the page this shouldn’t normally be a problem for most connection speeds. If however you have lots and lots of large images you page could end up taking a while to load... and your readers may get bored waiting. But, as a rule of thumb, anything under 100KB should be fine.

Q: I use Blogger and it automatically re-sizes my images. Do I need to bother with above?

A: Blogger automatically re-sizes images to a 400px width to reduce the strain on their servers, so you don’t need to worry about resizing your images.

Q: How else can I use this free image software?

A: You can also make adjustments to your image using the relevant drop down on the Paint.Net navigation bar. You can play around making images black and white, have a go at getting rid of spots with the airbrush or try making a cloudy photograph look like it was taken on a sunny day. A list of tutorials that will help to build your skills is here

Q: I want to add an HTML badge to Facebook Fan page. How do I work out the width?

This is pretty easy using Paint.net. Go to the Fan Page, copy the whole page using “Alt and Print Screen” and paste this into your Paint.Net new window. Then, while using the crop tool, keep an eye on the box in left hand corner - notice the dimensions change as you drag the box around the page. Once you have cropped an area you will see the size. If you have any problems ask Rocktime for help.

Q: Where can I source images for my blog?

Google image Search and Flickr are popular and easy ways to source images – but be wary of infringing copyright. If you are uncertain as to what you can use, royalty-free images can be sourced from many websites: we recommended iStockphoto.com as a good place to start.

Q: What copyright rules should I be aware of?

For the purposes of copyright images are considered under the term Artistic works. These can be: photographs - charts - diagrams - maps - graphs - cartoons - decorative graphics - illustrations - building plans - sculptures - drawings - paintings - logos - engravings - sketches - blueprints - moving images (films and TV broadcasts) If you have images or photographs which you would like to put on the internet you must check that permission has been given for them to be published in this way. If you are not the rights-owner and you do not know that the artist/photographer has been dead for 70 years then you will need explicit permission to publish. If the photograph contains images of people, you must also check under privacy law that they are unidentifiable or that their permission was given for their image to be used. Images of children of 18 or under cannot be used in the UK unless you have parental permission, or the image has been obtained from a commercial image which will have obtained the relevant images.
If you have any further questions on using images on blogs or on your website feel free to contact us via this blog post – we’d love to hear more of your own observations, problems, hints or tips.

If you would like to talk to us about running your own corporate blog or personal blog then we would love to hear from you talk to Rocktime Sales.

Author: Paul Forsdick