BYTE #9: Marketing shadows

Do we need images in a website?

Apart from aesthetic value of-course, are they really necessary?

We’ve known pictures could speak a 1000 words, but what relevance does it have outside branding?

How does a search engine that can only read text actually benefit from image? Doesn’t my site get slower by adding heavy images that could actually hurt my site ranking based on factors of loading speed?

Even with the advent of Google Lens, which is a machine learning algorithm that can scan photos and predict what’s on the photo, how would an abstract image designed to explain a core concept actually help search engines?

Apart from the human eye, can I impress anyone, and especially the gatekeeper – Google?

The answer to all these questions are – YES!

IMAGE OPTIMIZATION:

A site’s search engine ranking (ability to appear on top of Google Search) can actually improve by images, provided we optimize them. How exactly do we do that –

(i) Mixed media hosting

(ii) Third party image server

(iii) Resolution optimization

(iv) Dynamic loading while scrolling

(v) Alt-text and Src_Name html tags

(vi) Schema.org for standard images

For ease of understanding and aligning with your attention span, let’s just focus on one in this article.

DOWNSIDES OF IMAGES:

Before we move forward, it would be good to stay aware of using images sans optimization or in excess outside the literary aspect of breaking a reader’s flow.

· Loading time drastically increase

· The image may not load if there is a poor or interrupted connection

· Image won't display if the specified URL of the image is incorrect, broken or damaged

· All these three factors could bring down your search engine rank (SEO value)

Take a pause. Switch your attention!

CASE 1:

You could have seen something like this …

When the browser can’t display an image, this is what pops up.

CASE 2:

Well, in poor connectivity areas, you might have seen this …

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

You might have no idea what the former is and probably a better idea of the latter.

This is exactly what we call alternate text (Alt_text)

Alternate text is displayed when the image won’t display. It helps the viewer to understand the contents of an image. For those familiar with HTML, it is an attribute in <img> tag (Hyper Text Markup Language).

HOW DOES ALT_TEXT AFFECT SEO?

Search engine crawlers are developing continuously. But they can't interpret everything about an image. If there is misinterpretation or no interpretation of the image by a crawler, it significantly affects SEO. Also crawlers can't read or interpret text as or in images (so writing on an image won't help). This also reduces website ranking. Alt text is your way out of this mess. It instructs the crawler exactly interpret an image and text within.

'Alt_text is analogous to braille for a blind person.'

For example, if an image contains the name of a company and /or logo, the best option is to include that in the alt text.

Rephrased for understanding, alternate text is a "A word preferably a phrase that best describes the nature of the content in the image precisely with SEO benefits".

Start using them right away. Write to us to understand further, incase you have trouble during implementation.

Oh, and for those of you wondering why this article was titled 'shadow marketing' – that was just our pun to what alt-text does to your image from within its shadows. (Batman fans, yo!)

Take-away:

If you are using a Wordpress CMS for your website, then you can include this plugin to automatically indicate to you whether the alt-text tags you've added aligns with the keywords on the web-page. You will also receive an alert in its absence.

Featured:

Sparesonline.in is an e-commerce site based out of India, that facilitates the purchase of any parts sources from the best spare part manufacturers. Their site is impressive at its loading speed despite being image heavy on mobile phones. Checkout their page-speed test results here. Lookout for inspiration!

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