Why Alt-Text is Important for WordPress Websites.

Alt-text, or alternative text, is a short description of an image that is used to provide context for the image to people who cannot see it. This includes people who are visually impaired, using a screen reader, or have their images turned off. Alt-text is also important for search engine optimization (SEO), as it helps search engines understand the content of your images and rank them higher in search results.

Here are some of the benefits of using alt-text on your WordPress website:

Improves accessibility:
Alt-text makes your website more accessible to people who cannot see images. This includes people who are visually impaired, using a screen reader, or have their images turned off.

Improves SEO:
Alt-text helps search engines understand the content of your images and rank them higher in search results. This can lead to more traffic to your website from search engines.

Provides context for images:
Alt-text can provide context for images, which can help users understand the content of your website better. This is especially important for images that are used to illustrate a specific point or concept.

Increases engagement:
Alt-text can increase engagement with your website by making it more visually appealing and easier to understand. This can lead to longer dwell times and higher conversion rates.

Here are some tips for writing good alt-text:

Be descriptive. Alt-text should be descriptive enough to give users a good understanding of the image. This means describing what the image shows, as well as any important details.

Use keywords:
Alt-text can be used to include keywords that are relevant to your website content. This can help search engines rank your website higher in search results.

Keep it short:
Alt-text should be short and to the point. Aim for around 125 characters or less.

Use proper grammar and spelling:
Alt-text should be written using proper grammar and spelling. This will make it easier for users and search engines to understand.

If you are using WordPress, you can add alt-text to your images by following these steps:

1. Go to the Media Library and select the image you want to add alt-text to.
2. Click the “Edit” button.
3. In the “Alternative Text” field, enter a short description of the image.
4. Click the “Update” button.

Alt-text is an important part of any WordPress website. By adding alt-text to your images, you can improve the accessibility, SEO, and engagement of your website.

Also from my understanding it also weighs in the importance/relevance of your website to the internet users as a whole too. So your content better be very good!

Take a look at this YouTube video about Google links, it seems legit and informative about the subject.

Didn’t see it all; but the information he shares in the video about Google Site links and how to get your website’s links fetched by Google Bot into the Google search results seems like good advise to start with.

Alternatively take a look at this article here:
https://www.reliablesoft.net/sitelinks/

Pretty much what i wrote above.

It seems you cannot submit or influence in any way Google to include links from my website in the search results.

Here is a screenshot from a random search i did on Google and want this too. Not only does it look so nice, but i think it will increase my click through rate too which would be great. 😄

Google writes this:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/sitelinks

Sitelinks are links from the same domain that are clustered together under a web result. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.

We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.

Sitelinks best practices
At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate site owner input in the future. There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks.

• Make sure that the text you use as your page titles and in your headings is informative, relevant, and compact.
• Create a logical site structure that is easy for users to navigate, and make sure you link to your important pages from other relevant pages.
• Ensure that your internal links’ anchor text is concise and relevant to the page they’re pointing to.

Avoid repetitions in your content.
If you need to remove a sitelink, consider removing the page from your site or using noindex.

But how can you optimize your website so Google actuallly picks your website and include sitelinks in their search results?

I have been searching a bit for this but I’m uncertain about it..

On-site optimization is a mix of qualitative and quantitative research used to identify problem areas on a website in order to give actionable insights for improvement. Quantitative research is done by diving into the numbers to figure out what is happening on the site. Metrics such as Bounce & Exit Rates, Conversion Rates, Engagement Time, and others like these allow us to form a picture of how users interact with each page.

Quantitative research makes up only half of the picture, however; qualitative research makes up the rest. Qualitative research deals with investigating the website front-end to conclude why users are acting the way they are. Using quantitative data as the basis for qualitative research lets us pinpoint problem areas and make data-driven decisions for improvement.

It is important to note that on-site optimization is different than search engine optimization (SEO). While SEO is used to gain new organic search traffic, on-site optimization is intended to increase site conversion and user engagement for existing traffic. Certain activities from on-site optimization can organically improve SEO and vice versa, but on-site optimization and SEO are not equivalent.

For example, activities like ensuring a page has helpful content and clear calls-to-action, reducing page load time, and preventing bounces and bad exits have all been shown to improve SEO. On the other hand, these are also effective strategies for increasing conversion for existing users. Choosing between an on-site optimization or a search engine optimization exercise can be as simple as deciding if the target is new or existing traffic.

For on-site optimization, we focus on optimizing the experience for existing site traffic. Especially in eCommerce, getting traffic to your site is one thing, but it’s most important to get that traffic to convert to sales for your business. With Silk’s on-site optimization package, we deliver data-driven recommendations that help you improve the on-site experience for existing traffic, which in turn can help you grow new traffic from there.

Through on-site optimaztion , you can gain meaningful and actionable insights to the following:

1. Increase site conversion and revenue
Find and relieve barriers that are preventing site transactions. This can include points of friction or potential pain points faced by customers in areas throughout the site such as the shopping cart and checkout.

2. Increase customer engagement
Find reasons for and prevent unnecessary bounces while moving traffic into a conversion funnel. Take steps to encourage users to act when they visit your site.

3. Better allocate funds for marketing activities
Get insights into what marketing activities are and aren’t working and receive recommendations on how to improve them. Have a clear strategy and plan in place to maximize use of your marketing dollars.
Keep in mind, any optimization activities should always be paired with testing for continuous improvement. On-site optimization gives insights into the “what” and the “why,” but these insights need to be validated with implementation and testing. Using methods like A/B and multivariate testing will shed light on which insights provide the most value. Ensuring that your insights and results are both being driven by quantitative and qualitative data will set your website up for success.

Want to learn and read more about how to do on-site optimization?
Read about the subject in this article on SEO.com here: https://seo.co/improve-seo/on-site-optimization/ which provides a good insight to on-site optimization strategies.