Does the text on an image affect rankings

autosasha

autosasha

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We generate articles using AI and decided to add the generated image to them at the same time. But here's a question - does it make sense to have text overlaid on the image (post title with the main keyword) or does it not play a special role? (for us the choice of api for generation depends on it).
 
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Nah, Google can’t read the text written inside an image.
If you want SEO benefit, add your keywords in the alt tag or caption instead.
The overlay text is fine visually, but doesn’t help with ranking.
 
The text on an image can be read by Google, yes. Thbs, it doesn't "necessarily" affect rankings. It just does what other text elements on the page does. If someone searches for your page using the text on the image, and you have a lot of ranking power,l for that page, it will show up top. Text on an image doesn't do anything special.


EDIT: I see another comment disagreeing with what I said. Google CAN READ text on an image. I snapped some meeting minutes paper and posted on a blog. After a month, they were ranking for some queries that are verbatim what's on the snapped paper.

You can actually copy text on an image in the internet by using Google Vision or whatever they call it.
 
Which llm would you recommend for generation
 
I'm not sure about rankings but it can help with branding and EEAT.

Including branded water mark and keeping all images within the same style can help with authority building.
 
Keyword on the image doesn't directly help SEO, but it can improve Click through and Engagement.
 
I’ve tried both ways, and honestly, text on the image doesn’t seem to help much for SEO. It’s better to focus on good alt text and image filenames those make a clearer impact on rankings.
 
autosasha said:
We generate articles using AI and decided to add the generated image to them at the same time. But here's a question - does it make sense to have text overlaid on the image (post title with the main keyword) or does it not play a special role? (for us the choice of api for generation depends on it).
Click to expand...
Putting the title or keyword on the image can make it more eye-catching and shareable, but it doesn't really help SEO. It's useful if you want people to notice and click, otherwise it's optional.
 
autosasha said:
We generate articles using AI and decided to add the generated image to them at the same time. But here's a question - does it make sense to have text overlaid on the image (post title with the main keyword) or does it not play a special role? (for us the choice of api for generation depends on it).
Click to expand...
i guess it might depend of the type of link it represents .
 
Text on an image is not a gameable signal, otherwise you'd see huge padding pngs filled with text 1 shade darker/lighter than the background. Put any text you want reading, by either users or Googlebot, as plain text in your markup. This helps both accessibility and crawlability.
 
It is the proper use of alt text which helps the search engines to understand the image and hence could help in ranking.
 
Adding text to images doesn't help much
focus on alt text and file names instead.
 
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