Alt Text on Instagram Images: Why it Matters in 2019

How much time do you spend looking at photos each day? Whether it’s on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat the average user in the US spent 49 minutes a day in 2018 stimulated by visuals.

Business’s tell me everyday “they don’t need to focus their time on posting in social media”.  Alt Text being added to Social, may have changed that.

The feature was announced as users can add their own custom alt text. This information is a priority in assisting visually impaired consumers and search engine crawlers in reading websites.

Search engine crawlers have had difficulty highlighting social images within search.  Now that’s changed and here’s why you should pay attention.

Premier Seo agencies are utilizing Google Search Console to index their website pages to Google for feedback.  This allows Google to better understand your website and is an unconditional factor necessary for success in seo.

If you are a business that is heavily invested in photography this should become a priority in your seo process!

For our clients, this change will allow us to showcase their web images more frequently in results and track the benefits of sales overtime.

If you’re just starting your strategy, tackle other on-site SEO elements before you worry about optimizing alt attributes for existing images. Alt attributes still have a weighted SEO value and there is not enough benefit in launching an initiative to optimize them as a standalone tactic.

Instead, optimize (a) title tags and meta descriptions, (b) templates to give prominence to the optimal text fields, (b) and navigational and cross-linking elements. Then clean up duplicate content. After that, optimize alt attributes.

Need Help? Contact a Guardian Owl for guidance as you take flight with your alt text strategy for 2019