Using ALT tags
By Yelena Shapiro
What are ALT tags
and why should I use them?
You have a website. Your designer did an excellent job and it looks
great. You have plenty of images, and some text is in image format as
well.
Though your site may look good, it's not optimized to score high with
search engines. Since search engines don't index images, they can't index
all the text that your website has in image format. To fix this problem,
there are ALT tags, which are basically images' descriptions.
ALT tags are an excellent
way of dealing with images, but they're not the solution. Not all engines
are capable of reading ALT tags. Engines such as Excite,
Lycos, Inktomi
and Northern Light
don't pay any attention to them. However, you will never be penalized
for the use of ALT tags.
Therefore, it's recommended that you always add ALT tags to your images.
It can positively influence keyword frequency and help achieve you better
rankings. If possible, try to format your text without using images. This
will ensure that it gets indexed by all engines.
Important:
ALT tags make your site accessible to visually impaired people.
Visually impaired people use text readers, which can't read images, but
can detect text in ALT tags. Always describe important images, especially
those with embedded text, in your ALT tags.
If you have a site that uses graphics heavily, consider creating an
all-text version. Also, if you have a graphic with a link, always
provide the description of the link below. You will gain a broader audience,
and make your site easier to index for spiders. To learn more about making
your site accessible, click here.
How do I use ALT tags?
Here's an example of what ALT tags looks like.
<img src="image.gif"
alt="Your keywords">
You should use an
ALT tag with every single image. If you use text in an image, use the
same text in the tag. On other occasions, use ALT tags not only as a way
to describe images, but as a way to use more keywords in your page.
If you don't have the time to bother with ALT tags, you should at least
use them for the top images on your page. The top part should always
contain many keywords, and the use of ALT tags will help you achieve that.
Important: Keywords
in your ALT tag should be in a sentence, rather than a list. Remember
that ALT tags can be seen by the reader, if he or she mouses over the
image. The image's description (ALT tag) will also appear as the reader
holds the mouse still over the image for a few seconds. It also appears
while an image is loading, as well as when a visitor uses text-only browser
settings, which about 25% of users still do.
Avoiding
the use of spam
Search engines do not penalize for ALT tags, or for a certain amount of
keywords in ALT tags. There's a general rule of not repeating keywords
more than 3-7 times. Although this rule is not specific to ALT tags, better
safe than sorry.
An Overview
ALT tags
- Describe images
- Add more keywords
- Should be used
for each image
- Make site accessible
to visually impaired
- Keywords should
not be repeated more than 7 times
Want
even more keywords in your pages? Use comment tags >>>
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