Search Engine Optimization and ALT tags

Matthew · 08-07-2007, 05:49 PM

One thing I have been thinking of recently is the important of ALT tags. obviously they are important to add, however can they or should they be used to replace techniques such as replacing a header with an image (by for example using a negative text indent).

Opinions? How much notice of ALT tags do search engines take?

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iulianh · 08-07-2007, 06:16 PM

I don`t know, sincerly i never heard about the importance of alt tags .

Matthew · 08-07-2007, 06:19 PM

They are important in their own right to act as descriptions to images and as an alternative to browsers that don't support images (or screen readers etc) but like you I had never thought of how much Search Engine Optimization is affected by them.

vtabletop · 11-24-2007, 01:04 AM

The search engines ,so far as I know, do take in the alt tags and it does help Search Engine Optimization-wise , but if there are excessive alt tags used on a webpage ,then that can be seen as spamming by google spiders and could result in the banning of the site from google pages.

rayww · 11-24-2007, 07:29 AM

Yest, ALT tag is important and you can't neglect it.Just remember to type the keywords within the IMG tag.

Ender · 12-31-2007, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vtabletop

The search engines ,so far as I know, do take in the alt tags and it does help Search Engine Optimization-wise , but if there are excessive alt tags used on a webpage ,then that can be seen as spamming by google spiders and could result in the banning of the site from google pages.

This is a very important point. Your goal is not to use ALT tags to artificially boost the number of important keywords in your text. It is much more to boost the overall correlation between those keywords with the actual text on your page.

In other words, what you're shooting for is for Google, Yahoo, MSN, et al, to spider your site, and see an overall high correlation between what's in your META and ALT tags, and what content is actually present in the site. Accomplish this, and you'll place well.

On the other hand, try to artificially extend your site's SERP reach by including words that do not appear on the pages in question, or that aren't inherently relevant to the topic(s) at hand, and you'll more likely rank very low.

financialins · 05-11-2010, 08:20 AM

AlT tags are mainly used and concentrated when you are thinking to promote some images based websites..

Other than that i don't think they are that important...

financialins · 06-03-2010, 05:30 AM

If you have a image website then you don't have much option but alt tags only to promote your images

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