It's a bummer to realize that you've been making a mistake for the past five years.
But it feels great to fix that mistake!
That's what happened recently with our food blog, Pinch of Yum.
I realized we were making a mistake after getting a message from Casey Markee, a friend who is an SEO consultant and one of the experts at Food Blogger Pro.
“Bjork, you're making a mistake. The way you're using the Alt Text for images on Pinch of Yum is all wrong.”
Here's the mistake we were making…
If you use WordPress, then you know that the Alternate Text (Alt Text) field looks like this:
We had always used the Alt Text field in WordPress to enter a description that would show up on a Pinterest Pin.
We'd enter something like this:
Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie ♡ saucy mushrooms, carrots, and peas topped with creamy mashed potatoes. Real food meets comfort food! #meatless #vegetarian #vegan #mushroom #shepherdspie #cleaneating #casserole #plantbased | pinchofyum.com
We did that because the text you enter in the Alt Text field will show up as a description for a Pin when someone clicks to “Pin” the image, like this:
But that was a mistake.
The Alt Text shouldn't be used for a Pinterest description. The Alt Text should be used to describe what's in the image.
Describing the image helps to optimize your image for SEO and screen readers. Here's how to write a great SEO-friendly alt text for your images.
But we were doing what you shouldn't do. We were using the Alt Text field for a Pinterest description.
So we decided to change our ways and start using the Alt Text to describe the image.
Now, instead of entering this in the Alt Text field…
Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie ♡ saucy mushrooms, carrots, and peas topped with creamy mashed potatoes. Real food meets comfort food! #meatless #vegetarian #vegan #mushroom #shepherdspie #cleaneating #casserole #plantbased | pinchofyum.com
….we entered this:
A pan full of peas, mushrooms, and carrots
But that created a dilemma.
Once we started properly using the Alt Text then we immediately lost all potential to optimize our images with a Pinterest description.
And the Pinterest description for an image is a really important area to optimize.
There are two main reasons that it's important to have a good Pinterest description for your images:
- Pinterest uses that description area as a factor for search results on Pinterest.
- The description for a Pin is one of the main components that entices people to click through to your post.
It's doubly important! So you can see why we had a dilemma.
What's more important?
1. Should we use the Alt Text field for Pinterest?
or…
2. Should we use it for SEO and screen readers?
Which one did we decide to optimize? We didn't like picking one or the other, so…
We optimized for both!
But we had to create a brand new plugin in order to do it.
It took time, energy, and money to create the plugin, but it's worth it! We no longer have to pick between SEO or Pinterest, which feels great.
The plugin is called Tasty Pins, and we've been using it for over a month on Pinch of Yum.
And I'm writing today to let you know that…
Tasty Pins is now available for you to use on your blog! ?
Click here to get Tasty Pins for your blog <—
Tasty Pins allows you to optimize your Alt Text for SEO and screen readers while also optimizing your image's Pinterest description.
It's the best of both worlds and the plugin is super simple to use.
After you install it, a new field in your WordPress image window will appear called Pinterest Text.
This is the field that you'll use to enter your Pinterest description.
Now that you have the Pinterest Text field you can feel good about using the Alternative Text field for what it should be used for: describing the image.
As I mentioned before, we've been using Tasty Pins on Pinch of Yum for about a month. It feels great to know that we're optimizing all our images for both Pinterest and SEO.
Click here to purchase Tasty Pins <—
Three cheers for continued growth through continued improvement! ?