Alternative text, or simply alt text, is the written version of an image that is utilized when an image cannot be seen. The best alt text is descriptive and gives users the full “picture” of the image that cannot be seen. In addition to making your website more accessible by giving image descriptions for screen reading software to read, alt text has a surprising amount of SEO benefits.
Alt text also functions well on WordPress to deliver these benefits. On WordPress, adding alt text is a speedy process that allows you to rank for keywords and diversify the places on the web your content is ranking on. By making your website more accessible and SEO-friendly, adding alt text to your images is a no brainer for small businesses breaking into the world of SEO.
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Your Alt Text Can Rank for Your Yoast Keywords
If you are at all familiar with WordPress, you are likely familiar with the Yoast plugin which is utilized to evaluate expected SEO performance. One of the major aspects of content that Yoast takes into account when crafting an SEO score is the frequency of a specified keyword. Usually content creators try to use their keyword in their content titles, subheadings, and frequently throughout the content, but many fail to utilize the keywords in alternative text.
In relation to Yoast’s SEO scores, adding alt text to your images does two things: it proves that your content has images, and it gives you more opportunities to rank for those keywords. Having images makes your page more appealing and makes it rank higher on search engines. Including alt text alerts Yoast that you are including images in your content, thus improving your SEO performance score. As for the frequency of keywords, adding your keywords in the alt text descriptions of three images in your content can have a significant impact on your SEO performance. The Yoast plugin is your SEO best friend, and taking the time to add alt text on WordPress can make this plugin even worth more of your while. 
Alt Text Can Help You Rank on Google Images
Every business wants to rank high on a Google search. However, it is necessary to point out that ranking on Google images is different from ranking on the homepage of a Google search. This is when alt text comes into play again; alt text can help diversify how you are ranking on different aspects of internet searches. Google uses alt text and the context of your page in order to understand the subject matter of an image. This has an impact on how the image ranks on a Google image search— the closer the subject matter to the search terms, the higher the image ranks.
WordPress makes adding alt text easy, giving you a quick opportunity to rank higher on Google images. Diversifying how your content ranks on different avenues gives you a higher chance a user will stumble onto your content. Your goal in SEO is to make your content or images reach the greatest audience as possible, and WordPress along with alt text open the door to rank on Google’s home page search and images search.
Adding Alt Text on WordPress Takes Three Clicks
The benefit WordPress has over other content managing platforms is that adding alt text is fast. And by fast, we mean it-only-takes-three-clicks fast. On WordPress, you can add alternative text while uploading your images, and this text is immediately rated for SEO performance by Yoast. This small amount of time on WordPress is worth it, as ranking for keywords and ranking higher on Google images are SEO benefits that can be easily achieved by including alt text. 
As we also explained before, expanding the scope of the audience your content serves is essential for SEO. Adding alt text in three clicks on WordPress immediately expands your content to those who cannot visually see your images. By making your content more accessible, you are essentially increasing the reach of who your content serves. This again can lead to increased engagement and conversion rates.
Conclusion
Overall, the simple task of adding alt text to your images is a task worth your business’s time. The combination of alt text, WordPress, and the Yoast plugin make seeing the impacts of your alt text fast. Especially for small businesses, putting the effort into boosting your SEO performance is essential, and adding alt text is a time-effective first step to long term SEO benefits.
