What is an Alt Tag exactly?

Alt tags, otherwise known as "alt attributes," are embedded within the html code in order to describe how an image appears on the page. There are three main reasons why having alt tags for all of your images is a good idea. First, it allows accessibiity for visitors who are visually impaired and otherwise cannot see the image. There are also some text-only browsers that some people might be using, and having a descriptive alt tag will ensure these visitors know what is on the page even when an image is not loaded. The second reason to have an alt tag is to ensure that a visitor knows what is on the page in the event that their browser doesn't load the image or loads it too slowly due to a poor internet connection or server/network issues. Lastly, search engines use crawlers and having good image descriptions increases the chances that your web page will get indexed correctly.

An alt tag is more correctly termed as an alt attribute due to the fact that it is not actually an html tag. It is written inside of an image tag, and is limited by approximately 125 characters. Therefore, while you should put very accurate descriptions inside the alt tag, there is a reasonable limit to how many words you can put into it. While putting keywords inside an alt tag is good practice, they should not be used for the sole purpose of SEO because you want the tag to accurately describe the image in order to provide all accessibility to your web content.

Add Alt Tags to your images by watching this video for step-by-step directions.