It’ll be easy to show you.
Here is an example of an HTML image tag without the altattribute included:<img src="/images/FrogDemon.
jpg" width="140px" height="212px">Here is an example with the alt attribute:<img src="/images/FrogDemon.
jpg" alt="What Ho, Frog Demons by Chris Kutalik and Luka Rejec" width="140px" height="212px">The alt attribute (also known as alternative text) is an extra bit of HTML that gives an image description.
This is not something viewers of your page will see unless the image is broken.
Alt attributes are primarily used to assist the visually impaired as screen readers will read this text to them to increase their understanding as to what images are on the page.
They are also indexed by search engines and can contribute to your SEO.
Alt attributes are a great place for keywords if they are relevant to the image.
This is another place where keyword stuffing won’t get you anywhere and it will also make your site less-accessible to anyone using a screen reader.
The text you put into your alt attribute should be a description of your image that stands alone should the image be absent.
A proper one sentence description should be sufficient and if your images are relevant to your content then your keywords will automatically be a part of that attribute text.
Our examples didn’t really take advantage of their image alt attributes but they’re also using blogging software that does most of the work for them.
It may not be something they have reasonable access to.
But if you can edit your image’s alt attribute then do so in a way that adds context to your website.
There is some great in-depth info on alt text in this Moz.
com article.
External LinksI know links are not technically keywords, but I still felt that this topic fit in nicely here because they work alongside each other.
Links could most certainly be comprised of or include your keywords but the goal here is to generate as many external links to your website or product that you can.
External links are a very large part of the relevancy factor.
If people are pointing to your website from theirs then it means your information is useful to someone else.
It’s proof that you’re offering something worth finding on a SERP.
It is sweet validation.
You can get the ball rolling on external links by making sure you use your social media presence to post links to your site and products.
With the right audience, you’ll hopefully get them to post links to you as well.
Twitter’s retweets are great for this.
The two review websites in our example Dungeons and Possums and Ten Foot Pole are very likely ranking high on the Search Engine Results Page because of external links.
I watched first hand as Dungeons and Possums generated a lot of buzz around his reviews by grabbing the attention of his followers on Twitter.
He’d tweet a review and then they’d retweet it, thus generating quite a few external links carrying great keywords.
How do you generate more external links?.By writing content people want to link to.
You’ll have to start with your own powers of self-promotion but if you can garner interest you can start getting others to link back to you.
If it’s a TTRPG you’re trying to sell then send some copies out to reviewers who you know will link back to you.
Blog about your product on a regular basis, sharing your creative process and what makes your game unique.
Putting it All TogetherWe covered a lot in this article and there’s a ton of information out there on ways to maximize the usage of your keywords.
Remember, that all of these elements work together to optimize your website content for search.
Relevant headers and content, alt tags, and external links can do a lot to help your rank and get you more visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (or SERPs).
Remember not to stuff or force keywords into your code or content and if you’re using a blogging tool like Blogger or WordPress research how you can best control all the elements of your page.
One final note on keywords is to remember that people and products are all vying for a lot of the same ones.
If you have keywords that you feel are more unique it can be to your advantage to focus more on those words then the ones that are more common.
If you are writing a book of RPG dungeons then trying to rank your site with the keyword “dungeon” is going to be more than challenging.
But if your dungeons are unique in some way.
Say it’s a series of dungeons filled with telepathic cat people, then you have a something a bit more unique to work with.
Focus on the telepathic cats more than the dungeon.
That’s all I have for now on keywords.
I’m sure if this series gets any traction I’ll return to many of these topics and expand on the details.
For now, I just want to keep things fairly introductory and cover the basics (especially since I’m still learning much of this myself).
In my next post, I plan on talking about site maps and how to use the Google Search Console to index them.
Google’s tools are critical to SEO and it’s about time we started talking about them.
Thanks again for reading!.If you want to connect or ask questions you can find me on Twitter or over at FantasyRobotFighter.
com.
.