3 Invisible Elements That Should Be Part Of Every Article You Write For Medium

Alt text, SEO title, SEO description

In this article I write about elements of your story that most readers don’t see

Alt text

Alt text (text that describes an image) improves accessibility for people who can’t see images on web pages, including users who use screen readers or have low-bandwidth connections.

Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image.

Never leave the alt text empty

click on the alt text and add a description.

It may be helpful to search Google for the image and search google with the image.

For the image will tell you what Google may use if you don’t add a description. Even if you are satisfied with the current Google description add your own anyway.

What a visually impaired reader would see and what Google could link your story to can be a real head scratcher. In the case of the above image it is:

The American Staffing Association. What???

Search Google with the image can be more helpful.

In this case the image appeared on unsplash, on my article, on this article in the future and on pinterest with the following title:

Pigeon sitting on a war memorial statue in Lidcombe, Sydney NSW.

The alt text I used for the above image was:

pidgeon on war memorial statue in Australia.

The alt text that I used for this story was:

Swirling colours pink, blue, red and orange on a black background

Alt SEO title.

In Medium you can add an SEO title. This is found under the … in more settings.

Most of my articles have two titles. The title that readers on Medium see and the title that Google will use.

If your title is more than 60 characters long (including the | Medium) that Medium adds to the end of your title it will be truncated by Google. An ideal length is between 40–56 characters total.

The SEO title for this story at 51 characters was:

Add These Invisible Elements To Your Story | Medium

Alt SEO description

Also found under more settings is the SEO description. If you add nothing here Google will use your subtitle in search engine results.

You have 140–156 characters to provide a description of your story. It should include keywords that people will search for to find your story.

The SEO description I used for this article was:

Add alt text, SEO title, and SEO description to every article they you write for Medium. By Jim McAulay for Illumination and Medium.

Jim McAulay🍁 says “I just came up with a colour that doesn’t exist. It was a pigment of my imagination.”

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