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Adding Alt text to an image - best practice

by Eliot Y
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

I have several banners I want to place on each section of my company's website (an e-commerce site). Each banner will have the same or similar image of a model on the left. I want to know is it best, from an SEO perspective, to put the same alt text for each image (e.g. beautiful woman looking at pair of earrings), a similar alt text, (e.g. for one banner the alt text will be "beautiful woman looking at pair of yellow earrings" and another will be "beautiful woman looking at pair of green earrings") or should I try and make the alt text totally different each time?

I would also like to know if it is bad for SEO to have the same image the same for each banner. There are three different models for our banners so the images will often be the same, although the image on the right has a more specific picture for the subcategory so it will be different for each subcategory.

Thank you in advance for any advice,

Eliot Y
#adding #alt #image #practice #text
  • Profile picture of the author Patho
    I would not copy the same ALT image for every one of your images..This makes it obvious that you target certain keywords and you don't want to over do it.... Instead insert some niche-related broad keywords in your other images...you still can target your kw for 1 though
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  • Profile picture of the author redeye paradigm
    I think you it should ok to use similar text for the alt text of each image so long as it's nothing obvious like "how to lose weight". It should be remembered that the purpose of ALT tag is to describe what the image is. This is for browsers that are unable to display that image for whatever reason (broken link, ect) and people who are vision impaired and are relying on screen readers (screen readers will read what is between the ALT tags).

    As long as your ALT tag is genuinely describing the image in a way that is meaningful for someone who cannot see the image you will be ok. Of course if you can legitimately slip in a relevant keyword or two, more power to you.

    for more info check Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual - Quality Web Tips
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  • Profile picture of the author AndresNWD
    I agree that each alt description should be different. Use also synonyms of your most important keywords!

    By the way, nobody else thinks using the same banner is bad user experience? That will probably increase the Bounce Rate and lead to a traffic loss in the short term.
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  • Profile picture of the author alexjames212
    use unique alt tags for images, no matter how many of them you have in your site. Also capitalize each word in the alt tag and see that you keep the word limit to four or max five.
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    Originally Posted by Eliot Y View Post

    Hi,

    I have several banners I want to place on each section of my company's website (an e-commerce site). Each banner will have the same or similar image of a model on the left. I want to know is it best, from an SEO perspective, to put the same alt text for each image (e.g. beautiful woman looking at pair of earrings), a similar alt text, (e.g. for one banner the alt text will be "beautiful woman looking at pair of yellow earrings" and another will be "beautiful woman looking at pair of green earrings") or should I try and make the alt text totally different each time?

    I would also like to know if it is bad for SEO to have the same image the same for each banner. There are three different models for our banners so the images will often be the same, although the image on the right has a more specific picture for the subcategory so it will be different for each subcategory.

    Thank you in advance for any advice,

    Eliot Y
    Do not overdo this. I would only place one of those phrases and go with a TOTALLY different keyword for the other one, the same with EACH of the images!
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