Google shows images for around 38% of people's queries on SERPs and it's increasing day by day. Your website's images and graphics are a smart source of your organic traffic. But how can you ensure getting this traffic?
Follow our guide to add and edit image metadata in WordPress in the right way and drive desired traffic to your site with ease.
Image metadata is text information that includes details relevant to the image itself as well as information about its production. WordPress makes it easy to add image metadata such as title, alt tag, description, and caption.
Optimized image metadata tells search engines what the image is about and describes its relevance to the content. And you get the chance to rank your images for desired keywords.
Let’s walk through each step to edit image metadata in WordPress-
Step 1: Log in to Your WordPress Dashboard & Go To A Page/Post
Use your credentials to log in to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the page or post you want to work on.
After getting into the place, click the “+” button and choose the block type “image”.
It gives you options to add images by uploading from your PC or media library.
Step 2: Upload an Image & Add All the Metatags
Whenever you upload an image to WordPress, it gives you options to edit image metadata. You'll get the chance to fill in the required fields from the right-hand side editing panel.
For example, you can modify your image alt text, title, caption, and overall description.
Insert relative data within the corresponding field and select the image to add it to your content.
Here, we can add the fields like-
- Alt Text– Two people sitting at a table outdoors, enjoying tea and conversation.
- Title– drinking tea image
- Caption– An illustration of two people relaxing and drinking tea together.
- Description– This illustration shows two people sitting outdoors at a table, drinking tea and having a friendly conversation. The image represents relaxation, social connection, and the comfort of sharing a warm beverage.
You are good to go.
However, you can go back and edit image metadata whenever it's necessary.
Read More: Visual Content Marketing: An Actionable Guide for Digital Marketers.
Quick Explanation of Image Metadata Attributes
When you are adding a new image to a WordPress post or page, you get to insert “Attachment Details”. Users are more likely to ignore these elements of WordPress.
But proper utilization of this feature can return with a great ROI. Let us show you what they are and how to use them for your site's ranking-
Alt Text
This is the most important element of your image metatag. It allows you to create an alternative text version of your image.
So, if in case the image is unable to load or there is an accessibility issue, visitors can see the text. Alt text is also used to help search engines read images. The general rule of setting the alt text is to describe in the text what the image is communicating.
2 major usabilities of alt text-
SEO: Alt tags give search engines an idea of what images are all about, so they can better categorize your content.
Accessibility: With descriptive alt-text, visually impaired visitors can understand what is happening in an image.
Image Title
WordPress sets the default title to the name of the file. But you should change it to a descriptive title of the image. This title defines the pretty permalink for the attached image. Using the title you can also search for images in your media archive.
Image Caption
The caption is a text that traditionally appeared underneath the image. It helps the reader to understand the image better.
The placement would depend on your theme or your style customization. You can include the same image in multiple posts or several places within a post, attaching individual captions for each.
Image Description
Data from this field will be stored as post content for the attachment post. So if someone lands on the attachment post page for the image they will see the long description.
Are you aware of the attachment page? Whenever you upload a resource to your site, by default, WordPress creates a page to host just that particular content. This page is known as the attachment page.
How Image Meta Data Affects Web Performance
As we've said before, images play an essential role in web ranking. But search engines can't see any image in its visual form. Image alt text helps search engines to read the image as users are seeing it.
Other attributes of image metadata like title, description, and caption are important for better accessibility of your visitors with special needs. Or beneficial for people with poor network connections, devices that are unable to display images, and so on.
In Google Search Central's “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide,” they disclose the fact about image alt tags:
“Optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search projects like Google Images to better understand your images.”
Suppose browsers are struggling to render a page properly and can't display the images. In this situation, the website will show the image alt instead, describing the image elements.
If your images don't have any effective alt tags, then users will have no idea what image was meant to display. It hampers your user experience, which leads toa bad ranking on search engines.
Another Example to Understand the Power of Image Metadata
Take the example of a wedding photographer, Arnav. Arnav used to publish photo albums of the events he has covered to acknowledge his works. He gave great effort to his web content so he gets a better rank on Google and attracts more clients.
But he was struggling to get the expected response on the web.
Finally, he decided to publish a photo essay with all essential meta tags- title, alt text, caption, and description.
He created the alt tag including the company name, effective keywords like ‘wedding photographer, and his area name Franklin, Indiana. Arnav also added an interactive WordPress image gallery to make his site more engaging. He linked each image thumbnail to the respective attachment page that has all the details about the image.
As a result, after publishing the post Google indexed the images promptly using alt text. And now if anyone searches for a wedding photographer in Indiana, they are likely to see Arnav's photos. A simple action of adding image metadata boosts Arnav's business revenue by around 30%.
Bonus: Image Alt Text Best Practices
Initially, the aim of alt text is to improve accessibility by describing an image to visitors who are unable to see them. Besides, it helps search engine crawlers to scan an image and so improves rankings.
How To Write Good Alt Tags
- Describe the image, and be specific
- Add context that relates to the topic of the page
- While your image is wrapped in a link the alt text should narrate the target of the link.
- Don't do keyword stuffing in your alt tag
- Keep your alt text fewer than 125 characters
- Don't start alt text with “picture of…” or “Image of…”
When your image contains communicative content (either says a statement or is representing something relevant to the content on the page) then the alt text should explain the content either by repeating the text from the image or illustrating its content.
Examples of Good & Bad Alt text
You can see an image of a man skiing in the mountains. So what should be the alt text?
Bad Alt Text– Skiing
Good Alt Text – Man skiing down the snow-covered mountain
Read more: How to Add Alt Text to Images: 9 Tips to Write Optimal Image Alt Text for SEO.
FAQs for Edit Image Metadata
Below are some common queries users have while adding image metadata in WordPress-
Alt text is important because Google considers it a ranking factor for images. According to Google Search Central’s Advanced SEO documentation-
“Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image. Also, alt text in images is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link.”
Also, screen readers use alt text to help visitors with impaired vision to fully engage with your content.
Of course, you can edit image metadata anytime you want. Go to the post where you've added the image. Now from the media library search for the image or navigate to the image and edit metadata by selecting the image.
Image captions are not directly related to SEO. You can add captions to elaborate your image to your website visitors. It'll enhance your user experience indeed.
You can use a WordPress plugin to update, edit or remove the image metadata. It requires only a few clicks to modify the ALT tag or ALT text, as well as the image caption and image description directly from your WordPress dashboard media library page.
You can add alternative text using HTML markup inside different types of Content Management platforms. An image with alt text usually comprises the below code snippet-<img src="image.jpg" alt="Boy in a black jacket" title=“boy image” width="500" height="600">
This is an example of a picture of a boy who's wearing a black jacket.
Start Utilizing Your Image Metadata Today!
By emphasizing all the facts, different attributes of image metadata have individual benefits to make your content effective.
Failing to edit image metadata effectively may result in bad ranking as well as poor user experience.
Without metadata, it would be difficult for a search engine to interpret an image accurately. And misinterpretation leads to ranking for the wrong keywords. Also, people who are visually impaired can't communicate with the images.
Make it a habit to edit image metadata when you upload an image to your website. It makes your content optimized for search engines. If you have existing images on your website without proper metatag then you should manage time to go through them and add relevant metatag.
If you have further queries about adding metatag to your images, do use the comment section below.