I am creating some some graphs and charts in a spreadsheet for my website. After they are created, I am just doing a screen capture of each one and turning it into an image. The thought occurred to me that this isn’t very useful to Google as far as SEO goes.
So, is there a way I can take all of the useful information in my spreadsheet graphs and charts and get rewarded for good content by search engines?
Try populating the image title and alt attributes which can both accept a lot of data. You could also investigate long description.
If the information contained in the graphs and charts is not already provided in the text, then you need to offer a text alternative for the benefit of visually-impaired users (or anybody for whom the images don’t load, for whatever reason). That will cover search engines, too.
If the information is already these in the text, and the graphs simply provide a visual summary, then basic alt text should cover it.
I was thinking about that as well. My only concern is if I have a graph with lots of data points.
How can I present the data for the benefit of users (and to get brownie-points with search engines) and not make my article look ugly? For example, let’s say I have a supporting graph with a paper I wrote, but the graph consists of 100 months of data and 10 categories. If I added a table that was 100rows by 10 columns, I fear it would either scare off casual reader, or it would obfuscate the paper which is the most important - followed by the graph.
See what I mean?
I looked briefly into Google’s Structured Data this weekend, but it kind of looks dumb to me, and I’m not sure how it would apply to this situation if it would at all.
The responsive graph that @PaulOB did in the other thread looks like a good way to make a more semantic chart. Certainly better than using an image, as the data is in table form as far as html is concerned.
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