One of the most important things you can do to optimize your images for SEO is to add proper alt tags to the images.

ALT Tag means Alternative Tag. It’s also called the ALT Text. It was originally introduced for accessibility of visually impaired users.

It also helps search engine bots to understand images properly. This will definitely help you to drive traffic from the image-based search engine like Google Image Search.

In this post, I’ll show you how to add ALT tags to the images in WordPress. I’ll show both manual and automatic approach.

Before moving further, here are some tips for writing a proper ALT tag.

• ALT text should be related to your images.
• Keep the text short and meaningful.
• Use focus keywords.

Now let’s dive to the tutorial.

How To Add Alt Text To An Image In WordPress

WordPress allows you to add Alt text when you upload a new image.

Once you’ve uploaded a new image, click on the ‘Edit’ icon.

A box will be popped up. Just enter the Alt text on the right side of the box and click on ‘Select’.

That’s it. You’re done.

How To Add ALT Text Automatically Using A Plugin

Adding ALT text to new images is easy. But it’s not easy if you need to do it for old images one by one.

On that case, you need to use a plugin to automate the process. You can use the plugin – Auto Image Alt Attribute.

This plugin automatically adds ALT Text attribute to your images where alt tags are missing. Just install the plugin and alt attributes of missing images will be added automatically.

Now you need to install the plugin. Just go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and type ‘Auto Image Alt Attribute’ on the search box. Click on the ‘Install Now’ button.

Once you’ve activated the plugin, go to Dashboard > Auto Image Alt and make sure that it’s enabled.

That’s it. Your images will be updated with alt tags.

Further Reading: WP Smush.it Plugin: Reduce Image Sizes for Faster Loading

Over to You

If you are using a lot of images on your blog, I’d highly suggest you use alt attributes to your images properly. It will help you increase user experience and drive traffic from search engines. But don’t do keyword stuffing in the hope of better ranking.

Do let us know if you are using any other ways to add alt tags to images. If you find this post helpful, please help me by sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.