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Images and SEO

By far most of the sites on the web rely heavily on images to give the page a more visually appealing look or to explain something to the site's visitor. Examples of the latter can be a photo of the owner of the site or some kind of map that can explain something to the visitor more easily than when using text.

Search engines, at the moment, can't "read" images. The phrase "An image is worth a thousand words" is not true in SEO-land.

I'm not going to tell you to stop using images on your sites. Use them where needed, but keep in mind the consequences of using those images. They essentially hide content that is available for your users from search engines.

The easiest way to overcome this problem is to use the alt-attribute of your image. If the image is about your Labrador dog, make the alt text "Labrador dog". This will also help search engines find your image when people are doing an image search.

If the image is also a link, don't make the alt text "link to my Labrador dog". The a-href tag will have made that clear. Just write what the image is about.