Do Alt Tags Help With SEO? My Humble Opinion: Yes

Something in all my online research told me that Alt Tags didn’t help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Even though I was under the impression they wouldn’t help, I still tagged all of my images with appropriate titles. It wasn’t until recently that I was tracking one of my websites SEO progress that I realized that Alt Tags really do make a difference.

As you may know, I started a website called Magento Hosting Company. (learn more about this site here) In short, Magento Hosting Company is a website that presents Magento users with several options to host their Magento stores. I digress. The point here is that I have been using adwords to promote this site. There are several strategies for getting a low cost per click on your ads. One of these techniques is to bid on keyword misspellings. In this case, the word “Magento” is frequently misspelled “Magneto” by searchers (including me). Needless to say, I am bidding on that keyword. I’m also doing my best to optimize this site organically using various SEO methods. 

I was doing a search on google for the keyword “Magneto Hosting Company” to see if my adwords ad would show up on the right side. Low and behold my site appeared in the organic results! How did this happen? I asked myself. In the organic result it was clear to see that somewhere on my site I had the word “Magneto” instead of “Magento.” This was an accident, but I’m glad I made it. I did a quick “right click + view source” then CTRL+F for “Magneto.” Turns out that an alt tag on one of my images said “Magneto Hosting Company” instead of “Magento Hosting Company.” Case in point. Alt Tags do, in fact, affect organic search results. Pretty interesting discovery. 

Did you know this? Perhaps I’m just being a complete noob, but big deal. I’d be interested in your comments.