ALT tags - How important are they?

[seoman10]

I realise ALT tags are important from an accessibility perspective but in terms of organic search, do they carry much value?

I have a big site and it doesn't look like ALT tags have been added generally, it would be a massive job to fix and I'm just trying to weigh up what to concentrate on first.

Does anybody have any real life experience?

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Hi seoman10 answering your question

They are important, but I think they are not even in the TOP 20 of the priorities when you rank a site, for me the most iportant factor are

1. Content
2. Backlinks
3. Mobile-First User Experience
4. Other Technical Factors

To support my point of view you can check the 200 ranking factors from backlinko and Image Optimization is in the 24 position.

"24. Image Optimization: Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption."

Optimize the ALT tags can give you a better score but will not give thousands of visitors. In the other hand a good link mixed with agreat content can give you that traffic.

When you are making an onpage optimization is really good idea to put your main keywords or releated keywords in the images and those ALT tags must be related to the topic of your article but is very usual that you will have a lot of images without ALT tag, such as icons, ads, backgrounds and Im sure that they will not hurt your SEO

Sources
Search Engine Journal
Backlinko

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