Could creatives soon be competing with machines for jobs? 

It’s certainly possible, but before any (more) fear is elicited, let’s break down what exactly AI-generated images are and how they are made. 

What Exactly are AI-generated Images?

Put simply, AI-generated images are images that are created entirely by an algorithm, without any input from a human artist. The possibilities for this technology are vast, and it has the potential to revolutionize creative services completely. 

This algorithm is trained on a dataset of images, and then it uses that training to generate new images that are similar in style and content to the images in the dataset. 

The algorithm can generate anything from realistic photographs to abstract designs, and it can even create entirely new images that have never been seen before.

The more detailed and specific the original prompt, the more likely the algorithm will be able to successfully generate a slew of images based on the information.

How Quickly are AI-generated Images Created?

One of the most interesting things about AI-generated images is that they can be produced at a speed and scale that would be impossible for a human artist. With traditional art, it can take hours, days, or even weeks to create a single piece. 

With AI-generated images, however, an entire collection of images can be produced in a matter of seconds. This speed and scalability have the potential to completely transform the creative services industry.

Common Concerns Surrounding AI Creative Services

Much like other industries currently being impacted by AI trends, the creative field is no different. Graphic designers, developers, and artists of all kinds have concerns about the impact that AI-generated images will have on the industry. 

Putting Artists Out Of Work

One of the biggest concerns is that it will put traditional artists out of work. After all, if a machine can create images faster and more efficiently than a human artist, why would anyone hire a human artist in the first place?

While it’s true that AI-generated images have the potential to replace some types of artistic work, it’s important to remember that there are some things that machines simply can’t do. 

For example, machines don’t have emotions or life experiences, and they can’t create art that is deeply personal or reflective of the human condition. There’s real power in passion, which leads to the notion that there will always be a place for human artists in the industry, even as AI-generated images become more prevalent.

Copyright Infringement

There is also a general cause for concern when it comes to copyright infringement. It may be impossible to tell where inspiration or reference is coming from with AI-generated images being pulled from every edge of the web, which could make usage guidelines rather hazy going forward.

This directly plays into the looming issue of information interpretation. How AI algorithms interpret an image prompt is almost certainly going to be different from what the human mind can envision. 

With a few general searches, there seems to be a clear lack of realism in many of the AI-generated options. Many have clear imperfections or unrealistic styles that folks working in the creative field can easily spot, further emphasizing the battle between quantity and efficiency against quality. 

Lack of Diversity

This also leads to the concern that AI-generated images could make the industry less diverse. If the majority of images are generated by machines, there’s a risk that all images will start to look the same. This could result in a lack of diversity in the industry, as well as a loss of creativity and innovation.

The Positive Outlook on AI Creative Services

On the contrary, there’s also the potential for AI-generated images to make the industry more diverse. For example, AI could be used to create images that are more inclusive and representative of different cultures, races, and backgrounds. 

Additionally, AI-generated images could be used to create images that are more accessible to people with disabilities, such as images with audio descriptions or images that are designed to be viewed by people with color blindness. 

Many of these image styles are currently lacking when it comes to widely available stock assets that already dominate the web. 

Think about all of the off-the-wall requests that would have taken hours to manipulate different stock photos to get the request just right that could now be at the disposal of AI. It’s true that these could become an extension to stock assets and give creatives an endless library to play with, but at what cost?

Are AI-generated Images Free?

While many companies offer a few free credits for AI-generated images, once these credits run out many companies will attempt to capitalize on subscription-based services. 

OpenAI’s AI-generated image platform, DALL•E, includes 15 free credits upon account creation. This system is still not perfect and oftentimes crashes mid-search due to server errors, but produces some decent options in the grand scheme.

Adobe is also Beta-testing its new AI-generation platform, Adobe Firefly. The Firefly Beta is currently only accessible to approved creatives with active Adobe subscriptions.

The Future for AI Creative Services is Now

Adobe plans to take its AI capabilities to even bigger heights as well, with ideas in place that could transform the efficiency and overall framework of the creative field.

Adobe is exploring the following capabilities with Adobe Firefly:

• Text to image (AI-image generation)*
• Text effects*
• Recoloring vectors
• Inpainting
• Personalized images
• Text to vector
• Extending image aspect ratios
• 3D to image
• Text to pattern
• Text to brush
• Text to template
• Sketch to Image

* available with the Beta version

Fortunately for us, our team has already been approved to test Adobe Firefly (Beta) and is actively exploring its capabilities and offerings. 

As a matter of fact, the images featured throughout this post were all generated with Adobe Firefly… with some human manipulation, of course.

Overall, it’s clear that AI-generated images have the potential to completely transform the creative services industry. The concerns about the impact that this technology could have on traditional artists and the creative process are very real, but it’s important to remember that no matter how advanced the technology becomes, there will always be a place for human creativity and imagination.

It’s important to note that the AI trend is not limited to creative services. Direct Online Marketing provides AI Marketing Services as Ai continues to change what the Internet looks like and how we interact with it.

Read more about how AI is impacting other industries below.

• How To Optimize Your Website For ChatGPT
• Will AI Replace Copywriters?

The post Revolutionizing Creativity: How AI is Transforming the Landscape of Creative Services appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

This article was updated 06/04/2024

With all of the buzz following Google’s redesign of their image search UI in February 2018, alt text for images SEO is back with a vengeance.

Why did this change matter so much to the digital marketing community?

Because it’s not often Google overturns UI updates like this. However, that change meant that image SEO could make a comeback as a traffic generation strategy for digital marketers.

Independent research backs up why this matters. According to research published by Jumpshot and SparkToro, Google Image Search was responsible for over 22% of all internet searches done in 2018… and 3% of all Google search clicks.

For brands looking to drive relevant traffic to their site, image SEO has once again become a viable option because it helps the on-page optimization for your keyword targets as well as creating a new traffic opportunity. If it’s been a while since you brushed up on your SEO ranking factors, you may be asking yourself:

Do alt tags still matter for SEO?

Spoiler alert — they certainly do. Below, we take a look at why, and how you should take advantage of them.

What Is Alt Text For Images (AKA Alt Tags)?

It’s important to note that what we’re referring to in this post is not technically an “alt tag.” While most website owners and SEO professionals understand what someone means when referring to an alt tag, the correct terminology is alt text or alt attribute.

Despite being most commonly associated with image SEO, alt tags originally had a much different purpose.

Before 2000, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) community – the folks responsible for developing universal standards for the web – wanted to make the web more accessible for everyone. This meant figuring out how to improve online experiences for people with disabilities and visual impairments.

On May 5, 1999, W3C published its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG). The purpose was to explain how to make content more accessible for disabled Internet users and encourage developers to promote accessibility.

Alt attributes were designed for users of screen readers. These programs read content on a webpage aloud, and alt text found in the site’s HTML is the primary way of providing context to help someone understand the visual aspects of the page – even if they can’t see it.

Because accessibility is the core principle behind alt attributes, applying them to images will always have a positive impact on user experience.

The Anatomy of Alt Attributes & SEO

Alt attributes (aka alt tags) are short descriptions of about 100 characters that websites can assign to any image on their site. They are also visible on mouse hovers whenever an image is unable to load.

If you’ve used WordPress, you may have noticed that adding any new media prompts a dialog box with a field for incorporating new alt text.

For the above picture of our favorite office puppy, Digital Duke, the image tag’s alt text as HTML would look something like this:

<img src=”Digital-Duke-Reporting-for-Duty.jpg” alt=”Duke the Digital Dog Sitting in an Office Chair at Direct Online Marketing.”>

As it turns out, screen readers and accessibility software aren’t the only pieces of technology that need alt attributes to understand images.

The Creation And Rise of Google Image Search

Fun fact: a green Versace dress worn by Jennifer Lopez at the Grammy awards was the catalyst for Google innovating its image search.

In this article written by Google’s former Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt said, “At the time, [Lopez’s dress] was the most popular search query we had ever seen. But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: JLo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born.”

In July 2001, Google launched its new image search feature with roughly 250 million images indexed at the time. Just four years later, the number of indexed images had grown to one billion.

Google then made a significant update to the user interface where users could hover their mouses over an image result to get more information — such as visiting the website where the original image is hosted.

Along with the rollout of Google Universal Search in the same year, website owners soon learned that image search results were driving traffic to their sites.

Fast forward to 2013 — Google made a substantial change to image search. At that time, they decided that users should be able to click to open hi-res images directly in their search results without ever having to visit the source or website. With that change, Google had removed an alternative for websites to drive traffic outside of the SERPs.

Getty Images took issue with this in 2016 and filed a complaint with the European Commission, claiming that Google was enabling image piracy while also stifling site traffic.

After a few years of only minor tweaks, in February 2018 Google dropped this bomb on the digital marketing community via Twitter:

“Today we’re launching some changes on Google Images to help connect users and useful websites. This will include removing the View Image button. The Visit button remains, so users can see images in the context of the webpages they’re on.

…For those asking, yes, these changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week. They are designed to strike a balance between serving user needs and publisher concerns, both stakeholders we value.”

The Importance of Alt Text Content for Image SEO

Google has gotten quite good at determining the value and relevance of content for its users. As good as it is, the fact is that Google is still a machine and needs help from humans to understand visual elements.

Google uses alt text in the same way that the visually impaired use them — as a way to comprehend images because the algorithm cannot see nor cognitively understand images.

Applying an alt attribute on an image helps Google understand what an image is about to serve it in image results.

In the above example, a Google search for “sales strategy” yields an answer snippet from the top organic listing. However, the supplementary image provided in the snippet is also an image from the top-ranking website.

While this isn’t always the case, the main takeaway here is important: Images with optimized alt text are more likely to populate in image search queries.

Additionally, alt text is important to provide contextual relevance about the page where the image resides. When you use an optimized alt attribute with a target keyword, it gives your page a relevance boost. The content of the alt text is a helpful signal for search engines to understand what your page is all about.

Alt Tags: Keyword Stuffing & Image SEO

For SEOs, alt attributes serve as another opportunity to drive organic traffic to a targeted webpage through keyword strategy.

Keyword stuffing was a common tactic in the early days of SEO, and originally the image alt text field served as just another place to shove in as many keywords as possible to improve rankings. But Google was fully aware of this practice and released two algorithm changes to combat it: the infamous “Florida” and “Penguin” updates.

Keyword stuffing encompasses more than just adding multiple keywords via alt attributes. The process also shoves various keywords into page copy, heading tags, meta titles, descriptions, and the now-defunct keywords meta tag.

If you aim to optimize alt text with target keywords, your strategy is completely valid. Just use as much natural language as possible.

Image SEO, Alt Text, & ADA Compliance

The biggest reason you should consider using a mix of keywords, natural language, and phrases that accurately describe the image in your alt tags is to keep your site ADA compliant.

Data from the Pew Research Center indicates there were nearly 40 million citizens in the United States in 2015 with a disability. Millions of which likely require screen readers to consume content on the Internet.

According to a September 2019 report by WebAIM, over 44% of screen reader users surveyed use Google Chrome as their preferred browser. On top of that, over 97% of users surveyed use either Chrome or one of the other major browsers:

• Firefox (27.4%)
• Internet Explorer versions (14.5%)
• Safari (9.8%)

From these two sets of research, it is safe to assume that:

1. Users of screen readers are visiting your website
2. Users of screen readers are visiting your website using the same browsers that visitors who don’t require screen readers use

Unfortunately, you lack the ability through Google Analytics to tell how many of your visitors use screen readers. As of the time of this post update, screen reader user information is not passed from a web browser to any web analytics platform.

Why? Because changes made to your content by screen readers is done at the browser-level, and not directly inside your website’s code.

Until you are able to accurately determine how many of your site visitors require ADA compliance, we strongly recommend writing image alt tags that are both SEO-friendly and compliant with ADA standards.

Unsure if your alt tag SEO strategy will also improve your ADA compliance? Review your webpage for web accessibility issues here.

Alt Tags: Standard Practice or High Priority?

If you’re still unsure about the importance of alt attributes for image SEO, here’s a look at a few questions you might be asking yourself.

Q: Should I write alt text for all of my images?

A: Yes, because it is an easy opportunity to improve accessibility and user experience. Optimizing images with alt text will provide greater relevance to search engines about your content and help drive traffic to your site.

Q: Should alt text be a core focus of my SEO strategy?

A: No, because their impact on rankings isn’t great enough to significantly affect your rankings unless your website is image-focused.

Q: How high priority is alt text?

A: Writing alt text is a high priority whenever you upload an image to your site. Consider making this a standard practice because alt text is relatively simple to implement and stands to impact your SEO for a long time.

Keep in mind that alt attributes won’t have as much of an impact as other ranking factors, so historical alt text optimization shouldn’t be the first thing you address in an SEO campaign. You should only revisit alt text optimization after you address higher priority technical issues and implement content optimization.

Alt Text For Images SEO Insights

Search engines use hundreds of factors to judge how relevant a web page is for users. One of those factors is the image alt text, and with the changes to Google Image Search through the years, websites have the potential to drive serious traffic through the use of good image SEO.

Here are 10 best practices if you’re ready to start writing robust, authoritative, and ADA compliant alt text:

1. Assign alt tags to all images as you upload them.
2. 100 characters max.
3. Briefly describe the image and add in other important keywords when you have the space, like your brand name or business-related keywords.
4. Optimize your pages toward specific keywords, and integrate that page’s keyword in the alt text.
5. Don’t use “image of” or “picture of” – it’s a waste of your character limit.
6. When in doubt, write it out. Search engines are getting better at recognizing images, but pictures aren’t exactly SEO friendly without signals from page copy or alt text.
7. Be sure to apply alt text to site button images.
8. If you’re running a multi-language site, apply the necessary translated alt text.
9. Use natural language to describe an image. Write it like you would a page title for human readers and those who require screen readers, not just search engines.
10. For improved chances of landing an image in a featured snippet, try placing similar keyword text in the image itself using a font color that contrasts with the image background.

Should I Use An Alt Tag On All Images?

When in doubt, always include an alt tag on your images because they help visually impaired people engage with your site. As for SEO, it doesn’t hurt to throw in a few keywords as an added boost to your page relevance or to create more traffic opportunities through Google Images.

Interested in discovering more ways to improve the search engine optimization of your site? Contact us for an SEO audit or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

You may also check out any of these helpful resources below written by our team:

• Readability Analysis Tips To Improve Your Writing and SEO
• How Much Do Internal Links Affect SEO In 2020?
• How To Crush Your Unminified JS And CSS Issues
• These Landing Page Optimization Tips Dramatically Boost Conversions
• How to Tell if Your Website Load Times Are Hurting Your Business

The post Image SEO: Does Alt Text Still Matter? (Updated June 2024) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

She works for a big international company and uses the computer all day, however, didn’t know how to utilize Google for anything more than a quick search. She was amazed at all of the things that Google could do and the different ways to search. She stayed interested and continued to ask questions while at the same time inspiring my newest blog topics: Get to Know Google.

Since beginning my career with Direct Online Marketing, I have learned so many things about Google that I never knew existed and now I want to share them with you. Going forward when I post to our digital marketing blog, I will share some of the great features of Google Search, Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics.

Google Search & Search Operators

Let’s start with Google Search, the most common of Google functions. Here in 2015, most people already know how to conduct an average search to locate a website they are looking for. However, Google actually has several different types of search operators (modifiers) that can help you pin point exactly what you are looking for. Below I will explain and show you a few examples of what I mean.

Site Search (site:example.com)

As an SEO the most basic and most commonly used search operator is the site: operator which allows us to see the total number of pages that Google has indexed for a website.

Keyword + Site Search

While that may only excite my fellow SEO’s, let me show you some ways to use these search operators in your everyday life. You can use a site: operator to actually locate specific content within a website. Simply enter the keyword followed by site:example.com.

The very first organic result will take you directly to the topic within the site that you are looking for. This is not only a time saver, it can also eliminate a bulk of your bookmarks.

Name + Site Search

This awesome feature also works with names, enabling you to locate content within the site either about or by a specific person. This can help you quickly find an employee biography or maybe your favorite blogger within an organization.

So, did you know Google was so smart? You can actually let you imagination run wild with this search function. Think how quickly you could locate things on large sites, an iPhone on Amazon or hard to find collectibles on EBay…The possibilities are endless!

Image/Video + Site Search

Are you more of a visual person? Do you prefer to shop or locate information by scanning through pictures or even video rather than a bunch of search results? Well, you’re in luck! You can conduct any of the searches that I just listed and then click on the images tab or the video tab to get all pictures and videos on that site and relevant to your keyword. Go ahead, I know you’re dying to try it, I’ll wait.

In the meantime I’ll show you an example of looking for National Geographic Articles about Africa. When you have located an image of interest, simply click on it and it will give you the option to visit the page, in just 2 clicks you have found your article of interest. The videos tab will do the same thing, except it will simply pull all the videos within the site about Africa.

That’s all, for now, I hope that you learned a thing or two about search operators and how to use them in your everyday life. I’m excited to hear about any searches or combination of searches that you conduct, so feel free to share in the comments.

See you on the next edition of Get to Know Google!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Get to Know Google: Site Search appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Nothing too interesting when you do a search on St. Patty’s Day: all t-shirts, which you might expect. They did throw in some product results as well, which were more interesting and included personalized gifts, posters, and boutonnieres (misspelled on the ad and the product page – way to go, Target).

Overall, nothing too exciting, although if the click costs are reasonable, I’d imagine all of these companies are making money today for being on top of the holiday.

So I was about to do some more searches to see if I could find anything more interesting, when the Realtime results caught my eye.

For those of you not familiar, Google will include realtime results within their standard results for certain search queries that are trending and likely to have lots of people talking about them right now (like “St. Patty’s Day” on the actual day).

The vast majority of these results come from twitter, but they can come from other sources as well, like Google Buzz.  I mean, I think they still do – need confirmation that Google Buzz still exists.  [Quick search]  Yup, it still exists. If you want to see Realtime results for any search phrase regardless of whether or not Google is displaying them within their standard results, no problem.  Under the date range section on the left hand side of the results, choose “Latest.”

Bing also offers up real time results, although theirs are exclusively from twitter.  These results work okay in IE, but not so much in firefox, or at least my version / OS system combo.  They tend to run over the paid ads, which I’m sure Microsoft adCenter advertisers are thrilled with:

Anyway, back to Google.  When I looked down at the Realtime results, I saw this (click to zoom):

Well, at first I had normal SafeSearch set at Moderate, the default setting.  But then, I went in and changed it to Strict and still got this same result.  If you don’t want to click to enlarge, I don’t blame you.  It shows a tweet from a woman whose twitter profile pic is basically her face and her hands holding / covering her bare breasts.  Her twitter handle?  PunkRockT**s.  Now, there was nothing wrong with her tweet itself: “Happy St Patty’s Day! Crack open a Guinness!”  I’m not prudish about these types of things, but with three kids under six who use the computer and will be Googling soon, this does bother me.

SafeSearch Strict Difficulties

Let’s be fair about this to Google:

1. The tweet itself should not have set off any flags.
2. With twitter handles, there’s no spacing.  So if you would automatically filter out this site owner’s / affiliate’s profile based on the handle, you’d also be filtering out other combinations.  For example, what if someone really hated TSA’s current security features and set up a profile for AntiTSA?
3. Pictures can be tricky.  No nipples are showing and you’ll see cleavage walking down virtually any street in the U.S. on a hot summer day and certainly at any beach.  It’s easier for a human to tell that this picture is skanky and likely to lead to an unsafe result for children.

Now, let’s be a little more critical:

1. If you’re choosing to make your SafeSearch results strict, you probably don’t care about a little collateral damage and want Google to err on the side of caution.  That would be enough to kick out this twitterer’s tweets based on the handle.
2. They do have the ability to scan images to determine – to a large degree – what should appear in image results, so they could use this same technology for social media profile pics.  However, you wonder if Google has the same definition of “Strict” as the average person when you have that setting applied and do an image search for breasts (CAUTION – EXTREMELY NSFW, especially if you don’t have your settings already set to “Strict”).
3. Google absolutely knows how to crawl sites.  If they crawled her landing page (which is what you’d see if you clicked on her name – I keep defaulting to “her” because of the name even though I’d bet dollars to donuts that it’s some guy running this stream), they would see some absolutely unsuitable words in her timeline, and right at the top.  They’d also see a ton of links to a tumblr for a site called “naughtyamateurs.”  I thought at first this might be for Phil Fulmer’s former players.  Turns out, no.  The other thing you’d expect from that name.

I completely understand posting real time results creates difficulties in this arena for any search engine.  But, if you’re going to offer supposedly safe search results, you need to figure it out BEFORE you start including the results.  If you can’t, why not just turn off Realtime results for anyone with the Strict setting?

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

Happy St. Patty’s

And now, back to the real reason for this post.  A very merry St. Patrick’s Day to ya.  Enjoy all the green-laden festivities and best of luck to you in your NCAA pool.  Let’s Goooooooo, Mountaineers!  And ‘Dores!

The post A Chink in Google’s Safe Search Armor + Happy St. Patty’s! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.