Did you know you could Alt Text your Instagram Photos?

You need to know about alt text, why it’s important, and how to do it to your Instagram photos!

“Alt text,” first of all, is a contraction of “alternative text.: It’s a brief written description of an image, one that makes sense of that image if it can’t be seen for whatever reason. OK, but what does that have to do with you, you might be asking? Simple, our friend:

Well-written alt text is critical to your website’s accessibility; as well as your site’s search engine optimization (SEO)!

First, let’s talk about accessibility, shall we?

Alt text is read by screen readers in place of images. This allows your image content to be accessed by the visually impaired. Also, alt text can be useful to people that have difficulties with certain sensory processing or with learning disabilities. Imagine the screen reader reading to them IMG-245967 versus an African American woman holding True Laundry Detergent. The latter sounds a whole lot better and gives them an idea of what the image is versus the former. Alt-text is also displayed in place of the image in browsers, if the image file hasn’t been loaded, or when the user chooses not to view the images. Think of when Facebook is being hella glitchy and you can’t see the pictures people posted but instead see IMG-245967; you can’t even like that in good faith 😂.

OK. Stay with us. Next, we’ll talk about SEO.

Because all good alt text gives semantic meaning to (and a description of) an image; it is what is used by search engines to return search results. Let us put that another way: good alt text gives search engines way more (and way better) information to rank your website with—so it gets ranked even higher! The more thoughtfully and helpfully you describe your content to users, the easier it so for the search engine robots to understand as well! In other words, good alt text leads to greater access; good alt text leads to higher rankings; which means good alt text improves your business!

Now how does this work for Instagram?

Number one, how many times have you googled something and gotten an Instagram link or a Pinterest link? Alt text helps to make sure your picture shows up in those searches. Now we aren’t saying to Alt-text every single picture you put on Instagram as you should do for your website, but we are saying it’s something you could and should do from time to time, especially those amazing product photos. Now to the million-dollar question, how do you do it? It’s super easy to do, just click the video below (it’s only 20 seconds).