Alt Tags And SEO

Are ALT tags important?

ALT tags are another of those areas with search engines where opinion seems to vary. I suppose that the only people who know how effective ALT text is in increasing your ranking in the search engines - are the search engine owners themselves. For me, the ALT tag falls into the category of 'probably not staggeringly important - BUT WORTH DOING ANYWAY!' After all it doesn't take long to add a few keywords into each image's ALT tag section.

What are ALT tags?

For anyone new - take a read of this article for more info:

Using your ALT text

ALT text is part of an IMAGE tag in HTML (the building blocks behind every webpage). ALT text is a way to insert words into the code of each image. It will display these words as the image loads, and when the mouse pointer is moved over the image.

Example:

Some people believe that you can get a 'boost' in your position in the search engines if you add in relevant words to your ALT tags. I have good placements with and without ALT text in my images. But I put them in whenever I really want to do everything possible to get a page listed well.

SearchEngineWatch.com keeps a reasonably well updated 'search engine features' chart, which lists which search engines 'see' ALT text and other areas of your page. You'll probably want to bookmark it and check back regularly:

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/features.html

... You'll see that it currently lists Altavista, Google and Teoma as reading and making use of the ALT text you put on your page.

With adult sites you can put ALT tags in both your pictures and ad graphics.

Here's some ALT tag tips from Sandra from a while ago:

ALT Tag tips
Written by Sandra

Spam issues

Let's think about what NOT to have first. About the most important part of getting good search engine traffic is first of all learning what will get you into trouble. While the definition of a 'spam' page varies greatly from webmaster to webmaster, there's usually an area at each search engine which lays out the things which will get your page removed, banned, penalized or shot at dawn.

Google has an extensive area for webmasters here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html

But even this does not give us much to go on as far as ALT tags are concerned. Except this single line:

"Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate."

But there are some things I'd advise you to avoid doing with the ALT tags for ANY search engines. They are:

Creating a 1 x 1 pixel image with the intention of adding in more keywords and phrases into the ALT tags. OR using the ALT tags on 'spacer' / invisible graphics.

Putting VAST numbers of keywords and phrases into each ALT tag. (Stuffing!)

If you've got a lot of images (say an image map) repeating the keyword or phrase over and over...

Repeating the same word in any ALT tag.

What should you write in the ALT tags of an adult page?

If I have one image on the page - which is a very common situation on a SE one-pager for me - I'll put my main target keyphrase in the ALT tag. I usually put it in all lower case, like this:

car sex picture

or in the tag:

<I><img src="picture.jpg" ALT="car sex picture"></I>

If I've got a number of images on the page - I'll usually put the main target phrase for the FIRST image, and then work in some variations for the rest of the images on the page. I also work hard to try to strike a happy medium where the ALT tags actually sound like an honest description of the image - even with banners.

So the first ALT tag might be "car sex" - the next might be "hot sex in a car", and then third image might be a banner and I'll put the ALT text "fucking in a car". All related 100% to the kind of phrase I'm going for. Like I said earlier - I'm not so sure that the SE's will ever really care much, or give me that boost that everyone wants, but it's still worth the little bit of effort to work on the ALT tags.

If in doubt as to whether a SEO technique will work, if it's not too time consuming AND IS NOT AGAINST THE SE'S RULES - do it.

Length, common sense and practical usage

It's hard to get good accurate information on how long the text in the ALT tags should be. Like most things with search engine optimization, it tends to be down to opinion from one person to the next. Some say 3 - 7 words whereas others say it's best to use full sentences. (Check out the links in the further reading at the end of this post for more opinions...) So I just use something that's served me well with SEO in the past - common sense!

If I were a search engine, how would I really want websites to use their ALT text? I probably wouldn't want too much repetition in them - and I'd definitely want something relevant in there.

So I always say about 3 - 4 words is fine. To me, something like "free sex, free sex, free sex" - 'looks' like spam. So it's more down to what is IN the ALT text rather than the length. Just be sensible and don't abuse the tag. Add in the phrase, or phrase which is a variation on it. And don't repeat in the same tag or cram it with mindless repetitions.

Use your image name too. It's another thing which might or might not help. So If the page is about car sex, have the image name AS car-sex.jpg, and also have the ALT tag as car sex. Make everything on the page 100% relevant without repeating grossly or breaking any rules.

Further reading:

Jill on ALT tags
http://www.searchengineguide.com/rankwrite/2001/0525_rw1.html

Using ALT tags
http://www.searchengines.com/alttags.html

An interesting trick - but does it work I wonder?
http://www.searchenginestrategies.biz/alttagoptimizationstrategies.htm

Boost Your Search Engine Rank With ALT Tags
http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/promo_no7.htm

TOM ^"^

ICQ 12616560
Email tom@tomsnewbiebooster.com

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