Alt Tags

[BeckyKey]

Hi

We have lots of alt tags missing, I know they'e recommended by Google, so moving forward we will ensure we add them to product images, but should we go back and update the ones we have missing?

How important is it for SEO? Has anyone tested this?

Thanks

[Alick300]

Hi,

For products image alt tag is necessary because It provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of the image. Google use this information to help determine the best image to return for a user's query. So it is really important and every product image must have alt tag

Thanks

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

I guess in the grand scheme of things, is it worth while to allocate time to 22,000 alt tags? over something else for SEO?

Thank you

[Alick300]

If you have 22,000 products then you should ask web developer to place alt tag value dynamically like product name. It will take 10-20 minutes to implement this and your all products image have alt tags immediately.

Hope this helps you.

Thanks

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Yes we do have this for our main product image already, the missing ones are mainly for additional images which need to be more descriptive and not duplicate of the product name. I'll see if there is anything they can come up with, but unfortunately it won't be priority for them.

Thanks

[matt.nails]

Becky

I would argue that it is important. How important, relative to other SEO tasks is the question. I certainly can't answer it for you but your questions and dilemma remind me of a SEMRush article i just read where SEO "Experts" were disagreeing about this very topic:  https://www.semrush.com/blog/real-time-website-analysis-topscorer-semrushchat/  The debate starts about 25% of the way into the article.

Good luck,

Matt

[julie-getonthemap]

Are the products on those pages important to you? Do you have another method of getting those products sold if you don't add the alt tags? Are you getting as much out of those pages now as you need to?

There's a million things you can do with SEO, but adding alt tags is one of the easiest ways to improve a page's performance.

Only you know if that page matters.

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Thanks for the input, I will review the pages and put a plan in place - I think it's something I will test first to see what impact it has.

Thank you

[BlueCorona]

Hi Becky,

Although ALT tags might not seem like a high priority item, I do think they hold a bit of value when it comes to SEO. Without the ALT tag, the search engine doesn't know what the image is of. By adding ALT tags to all 22,000 old images on the website, we could hope that this could help to boost your rankings slightly. It will also improve the user experience (if the images don't load for them), which is important in Google's eyes.

If you can't find a way to go through them quickly, then I wouldn't worry about it too much. Maybe find a way to tackle a thousand at a time, and so on.

Hope this helps!