| 🎯 What’s the goal? Set alternative text for images on your website. | ⚠️ Why does it matter? This text appears inside the image container when the image can not be displayed. It helps search engines understand what an image is about. It’s also a web accessibility improvement tool as the Alt Text also refers to the invisible description of images which are read aloud to blind users on a screen reader. |
| 🏁 What’s the result?Descriptive alternative texts set for your images. | ⌚ When do you do this? Ideally, as soon as you upload a new image. |
| ✅ Any special requirements? Access to your WordPress Admin Panel. | 🙋♂️Who should do it? People in charge of publishing a new Blog Post or page. |
👉 Where this is done: In the WordPress Admin Panel (Media) or in HTML Source.
⏳ How long will this take? about 5 minutes
Let’s get started, in 5-min your images will be properly described.
Environment setup:
- We recommend that you use Google Chrome browser to navigate the web,
Setting Alternative text for a new image
- First, “Log in” to your wordpress admin panel.
- Choose “Media” from the left side menu, then click on “Add New”.
- Add a new image by dragging it and dropping or clicking on “Select Files” and choose the file from your computer.
- Your newly uploaded image will appear below. Click on “Edit” next to it.
- In the editor, navigate to the “Alternative text” box, just below the uploaded image.
- Enter the desired alternative text here.
- Then click on “Update”.
Setting Alternative text for images from the Library
- First, “Log in” to your wordpress admin panel.
- Choose “Media” from the left side menu, then click on “Library”.
- You will be presented with all media uploaded to your site.
- Click on the image for which you want to set alternative text.
- On the right side, there is the “Alternative Text” box.
- Simply put desired alternative text in the box.
- The image information will be updated automatically. Click on “X” to exit the editor.
Key to SEO friendly alternative image text
Alternative text should be very descriptive and short at the same time. Below we will present some examples of bad, better and very good alternative texts.
First, we will look at our image.
Now we will produce some alternative text for it.
BAD: “car”
This kind of alternative text is bad form SEO perspective. It is too general for search engines to position it before other images.
BETTER: “Car road”
This kind of alternative text is better. We will give search engines and potential audiences more information about the image. It is more descriptive than the 1st example.
THE BEST: “Black car on the road”
This is the best possible alternative text for that image. We can call it full but short information. Search engines will have no issue recognizing what is on the image. We present any audience or web crawler with complete information.
This is it! Now you know how to add alternative text, but most importantly how you should compose your text. It will be your media self-presentation.
