Lesson 6.Hello again,Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I recently made a discovery that has totally changed how I upload graphics. As you know, for years now, I’ve been uploading my Christian web graphics to UponThisRock.com, allowing visitors to download and add to their websites or blogs, and every time I add a graphic to the page, I get a window that asks me for an Alt text to go along with the image. All this time, I’ve been leaving it blank, mainly out of laziness – wanting to get it up on the site as quick as possible. So I had dozens of graphics displayed on UponThisRock.com and all of them with out any Alt text. What I didn’t know was that I was missing out on an opportunity to get more visibility to my site. I felt so dumb.
What I learned recently is that Google can’t read graphics or flash or any other kind of visual images. (I’ve heard that they will be able to do this eventually, however.) You can make your images speak to Google, though, using the Alt text box of your images. When I look for an image to post on a blog post, I go to Google image search and type in what I’m looking for. The image in this post was found using this technique. What Google uses to find the image is the Alt text of the graphic. So I tried an experiment. I typed in cool Christian graphic into Google Image Search. In all the results that I received, I found only ONE of the many Christian images found on UponThisRock.com. Just ONE, and it wasn’t even from one of my pages. It was from a site that was reviewing UponThisRock.com. They had put an Alt text description on one of my graphics.
So what I did was go back to my graphics pages, and added the following Alt text to the images on about three pages: “Cool Christian Graphics.” I uploaded the pages, and after Google re-spidered my site, I noticed that my graphics started appearing more often.
What I did was give my images something to say to Google. I made my images speak. Now I have to go back and add the Alt text to ALL the images I have on UponThisRock.com. That will keep me busy for a while.
Do you have images on your website? Make sure you add an Alt text to each of them. Give the image a title with specific key words that describe your ministry. Let your images help you get more visitors to your site.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Sam
Are you signed up to receive my newsletter? I offer newsletter members bonus graphics for their site or blog. I also give my Newsletter members a discount on our Ultimage Graphics Collection. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified when I post something new. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @SamRangelUTR
