SEO for Rookies 
SEO for Rookies Paid Search ALT Tag Tips
SEO for Rookies Paid Search ALT Tag Tips
ALT Tag Tips |
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| Written by Scott Hendison | |
| Sunday, 15 April 2007 | |
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The use of ALT tags to help increase SERPS ranking is another controversial topic. The ALT tag is displayed by hovering your mouse over an image in Internet Explorer. The text that appears in the small yellow box is the result of an ALT tag in the HTML of the webpage. Since early in 2006, most experts have been claiming that ALT tags are now useless in improving SERPS rankings in the search engines. However, ALT tags are still indexed by spiders and can be found by executing a search. Common sense tells me that if ALT tags are indexed, then they are examined by search engines and should be created with SEO in mind. It certainly can do to you in no harm at all to continue to use ALT tags in the method for which they were intended, and that's why I still use them to this day. Since search engines do not reveal all of the specifics of how SERPS ranking is determined, we need to examine what we do know about SERPS ranking. Relevance is crucial. All content should be relevant to your website and useful to the user. An ALT tag adds useful information to the webpage and boosts relevance. If I am examining a website and I find an interesting image, I will hover over the image to look for more info from the ALT tag. If I hover over the image and the ALT tag displays, “BlahBlah123.JPEG”(or the location of the picture), I will not have gained any knowledge about the image and therefore the image becomes irrelevant. If, however, the ALT tag displays “Widget Company Logo by MTM Designs”, then I now have relevant information about the graphic that first caught my attention. As a consumer, this well planned relevance speaks volumes about the business whose webpage I am viewing. It communicates professionalism since they are not only are knowledgeable of ALT tags, but took the time to use them, they are also dedicated to customers, they are not a fly by night organization, and are mindful of small details- You can communicate all of that from a tiny yellow ALT tag box! An appropriately configured ALT tag appears after the file name and before the align indicator like so: <IMG src=”images/name.jpeg”ALT=”alt text phrase here” > As with keyword meta tags, you should use keywords in your ALT tags in moderation and only if your keywords are relevant to the image being tagged. Limit your description to one or two sentences, and include two to three relevant keywords if appropriate. Do not stuff your ALT tags with keywords! Spiders will recognize keyword over usage and give your website a lower ranking. They may also put your website on the tail end of a very long waiting list of sites waiting to be recrawled. Dishonest SEO may pay off quickly for some, but with the risk of being banned from a search engine, it’s just not a wise decision to employ grey or black hat SEO strategies. *update - Google's Matt Cutts gives a video about proper Alt tag use and FURTHER debunks the myth that "Alt tags don't matter anymore". |
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| Last updated on ( Tuesday, 22 January 2008 ) |
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