When you pin images from your website have you ever wanted a really easy way to fill in the comments automatically. A way that is going to boost your SEO and get you found in searches that matches up to the article or product that you have written? Well look no further……..
So, you have a website with a tonne of awesome images that your audience is going to want to pin. Perhaps you have some really great infographics that you want to encourage visitors to Pin. You already have a pin it button on your website, making it easy for them to click that all important button. But wait… they click “Pin it” and this is what they see..
OK… so I might have entered that description manually to prove a point. When anyone pins an image from your website, Pinterest looks at the alt tag of your image and if there isn’t one (*slaps wrist*), it looks for a title tag. If it can’t find either (!!) then it will populate the description of the pin with the file name: hence above.
What are alt tags?
ALT Tags are SO important for websites. In short, they are (alternative) descriptions of the images on your website and were originally used so that blind people can identify images using web readers. Without an alt tag, the web reader will simply say “image” or possibly the file name. I don’t know about you but that would really aggravate me!
Why alt tags matter for Pinterest
As mentioned above, Pinterest pulls alt tags from your images and populates the description of the pin automatically. Think about the person pinning your content, if the alt tag is an excellent representation of your image and source, they won’t have to alter the description and they’ll know at a glance exactly what they are pinning. That means they can simply pin it straight to their board. If the alt tag is not descriptive then they might choose to change the description themselves before pinning or maybe just leave it as it is.
But by far the greatest difference it will make to your website is SEO. You can choose what terms you would like that pin to include and boost your page for relevant keywords. It will boost your ranking within Pinterest but also externally on search engines.
Have we convinced you yet?
How to change alt tags
Depending on the web builder that you are using, there will be an option when you upload an image to enter the alt tag. In wordpress it is done on the “Add Media” menu on the right hand side.
If you’re feeling really geeky then you can add in the alt tag in the HTML code (example below from Penn State).
In summary, if you’ve got great images and graphics on your website that you are encouraging your audience to pin, make sure that the alt tags are populated with the terms that you want to be ranked for.
🙂
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