Common mistakes in Google SEO for foreign trade websites: Missing ALT tags

Naiba recently reviewed several friends' foreign trade websites and found that, besides issues with titles and descriptions, the most common problem ismissing image ALT tags. Therefore, this article introducesthe role of image ALT tags in Google SEO and how they should be written.。

What is an ALT Tag?

First, a visual demonstration. The alternative text for the image in the picture below is the alt tag.The format in HTML code, if you are using WordPress, is as follows:You can now go into your own self-built site's Admin Dashboard and check if the images you uploaded have this value filled in?

The alt tag is the text prompt for an image, typically used to describe the content of the image. The alt tag can play a certain role in SEO and also serve as a fallback when an image fails to load.

How does the alt tag serve as a fallback when an article image fails? Like in the image below.When an image in your article is missing, the webpage can display the image's alt attribute value. Users reading the article can mentally picture your image content, which is more user-friendly than a purely broken image.

The Role of ALT Tags in SEO

Most friends running foreign trade websites are selling products, so there will be many product images on the site. Therefore, the role of alt tags in the SEO process is quite important. 1. The alt tag directly affects image SEO performance.Friends who use search engines know that besides searching for web pages, image search is a feature many people use. Filling in the alt tag helps search engines quickly identify the content of your image (With technology today, even without alt information, machines can probably recognize the general content of an image, but certainly not as accurately as with an alt tag.) Search engines identify your image content through the alt tag, analyze the context to rank your image. When users use image search, they may find images from your website, thus gaining traffic through image SEO. For example, the image below shows the effect of an image from Naibabiji's website found via Google Image Search. 2. The alt tag can improve user experience and search engine friendliness.User experience is as demonstrated earlier; even if an image fails, users can know the image content through the alt tag and mentally fill in the content, preventing a complete break in thought. Search engine friendliness, simply put, means that whether it's Google, Baidu, or Bing, they all recommend filling in alt information. If you don't fill it in, aren't you ignoring their advice and making it harder for them to crawl and index?Note: The alt tag does not increase keyword density, so avoid keyword stuffing.

How to Write ALT Tags Correctly?

做Google SEORemember a basic principle: prioritize user experience. So, how should we write the alt information for images? That is,be factual. What the image content is, write that as the tag. Google's official recommendation is as follows:Use short but descriptive file names and alt textLike many other parts of a webpage considered for optimization, short but descriptive file names and alt text are ideal.Practices to Avoid:

• Use generic file names like „image1.jpg“, „pic.gif“, „1.jpg“ where possible (if your site has thousands of images, you may want to automate the naming process).
• The file name is excessively long.
• The alt text is stuffed with keywords, or an entire sentence is copy-pasted as alt text.

Provide alt text when using images as linksIf you decide to use an image as a link, providing alt text helps Google better understand the page you are linking to. It's like writing anchor text for a text link.Practices to Avoid:

• Writing excessively long alt text that could be considered spam.
• Using only image links for website navigation.

Reference:

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016