Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not some monolithic task that has to take months to complete. SEO is actually a bunch of little things that each work to enhance the optimization of your website. While it’s great to do everything, if you can’t, it’s still better to do some rather than do nothing.
With that in mind we’ve been doing these SEO Quick Tips. These are quick posts about things you can do in just a few minutes to enhance the SEO of your site, increase your rankings, and get more traffic to your site.
Use Alt Tags with Your Images:
When an image is added to a web page, you have the option to add what’s called an alt tag. The alt tag is text that will display if someone has disabled images or are provided for the visually impaired who use screen readers to surf the web. The alt text also sometimes is displayed when a person hovers their mouse over an image depending on their browser settings (as seen to the right). Alt tags are also read by the search engines and have a correlation with higher rankings.
Adding Alt Tags:
In most text editors that are used to edit webpages, when you add an image to a page or edit an image already on a page you will have the option in the settings to add “Alternate Text” or “Alt Text”. This is what will be used for the alt tag. If you are working in the actual HTML of your page, you can add alt=”your text here” to the image tag.
Add a phrase that is both descriptive of the image and, when possible, includes a keyword you are targeting on the page. If you have multiple images on a page, you can have different text targeting different keywords for each image. Don’t try to stuff keywords in the alt tags, but use the keywords when you can in a relatively natural way which still describes the image.
If you only have a few images on your website, you could probably add alt tags to the images in just a few minutes. If you have a lot of images, then you may want to start with some of your most important pages and add alt tags to the images on other pages over the course of a few weeks. Of course, from now on, you can be sure to add alt tags as you add any new images to your website.
Go Do It!
It doesn’t take long to make some simple changes that can have a real effect on your search rankings and increase traffic to your website. So, go to it!
Share with us:
- Do you use alt tags on your site?
- What other quick SEO strategies do you recommend?
OurChurch.Com Director of Marketing Services
Kurt serves as OurChurch.Com’s Director of Marketing Services, bringing over 20 years of expertise in search marketing, and has developed numerous marketing services and served hundreds of churches, schools, ministries, and businesses.
He has authored more than 500 articles on the subject, contributing to platforms like the Christian SEO Guys blog and Church Marketing University, and is an active participant on LocalSearchForum.com.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Kurt is an ordained minister, serving as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wesley Chapel, FL, demonstrating his commitment to both faith and community. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree from Georgia Southern University. He also holds a Specific Ministry Pastor Certificate and a General Pastor Certificate from Concordia Seminary.
2 Comments
thanks kurt for these valuable tips 🙂
thanks kurt for these useful recommendations