Img alt tag and key words.

[angrytree]

Greetings all!

What an incredible wealth of information this community offers! FANTASTIC! I've read through some of the threads here but, I've not been able to get a difinitive answer on this...

On the advice of a friend I stuffed the img alt tags on our site with about 12 key words a few weeks ago. This along with hours of KW optimization work resulted in our site bouncing up to number 9 on google. Just yesterday we noticed it had all but disapeared! If you type in the URL or check the cache on google you will find it but, that's it. Have I displeased the the Gods of Google? Do I need to wait for a full moon and a fetch a chicken to make amends?

This site is a labour of much love to my Wife and she was very excited about it being way up there. I understand it could be a totally unrelated glitch on our end or theirs but, I love this woman terribly and I can't bear the thought of her being dissapointed for any amount of time. Should I send Google help an explanation and beg for forgiveness? We are honest hard working people and it bothers me to think we may have gone over a line here.

Can one of you experts help me out here? Did I do something wrong? I've revised the tags btw.

While I've got your attention - Is search engine commando worth buying at all?

Thanks so much in advance for your time and help!

Reards,
at

[domokun]

oh dear.
unfortunately my friend it sounds as though you were caught with your hand in the till and if theres one thing google doesnt like its theives, or in this case, cheats.

keyword stuffing is a bad practice. its a bad practice because it can artificially inflate your ranking and therefore skew the results. sounds to me like google has caught you and the bad news is it can take an awful long time to regain the position you once enjoyed.

my advice would be to start with the basics. read up on some seo basics and make sure that you acheive them. if you ranking hasnt improved in a few months time id ditch the domain and start afresh; this time though, dont listen to the devil on your shoulder.

[seofreak]

Not sure why the penality is for some sites only .. for vareity of web design related keywords + mycountry / mycity the top site has heavily stuffed ALT tags. They link to pages k1-k2-k3.htm which is linked from very small pixled images (hard to find). Post florida they have benefited alot, and still continue to do so. Its disappointing :/

[angrytree]

Certainly this is distressing to hear. One things for sure we NEVER intended to cheat. I thought the advice about the alt tags was entirely legit. Prior to submitting the site I didn't see anything on Google specifically saying using the tags was wrong. Only a mention about being accurate. Which I thought they were. The main page uses an image map so it seemed a valid thing to do.

Perhaps the terms I've used in describing (stuffed) this make it sound worse then what it was. Our meta tags are relevant to the content, within the suggested number limits and I've used an analyzer to help us with this.

I chaff at terms such as "cheat" or "thief". Ignorance is never an excuse but, without doubt our motives were never evil.

Would there be any point to emailing their help address with a request to look us over again?

Thanks for the advice. I wish it were more optimistic however.

Regards,
at

[kaled]

Alt tags are to supply a text equivalent of an image. If the image is of a wine bottle, you might legitimately place in the alt tags perhaps "bottle of wine", or the brand or something like that.

Lose the dodgy SEO and you'll probably find yourself back where you were. However, it is entirely possible (indeed, probable) that it is coincdidence. I am aware of one member of WW who's tests indicate that ALT text is virtually ignored by Google.

Kaled.

PS I can't speak for others at WW, but I'm not too keen on phrases like "I thought the advice was legit". Presumably this translates into "I thought I could get away with it".

[jbinbpt]

While I've got your attention - Is ***** worth buying at all?

Paying for a program to do SEO, is like paying for ***.

You get out of it what you put into it.

jb

[martinibuster]

Sounds like you did some work, Google noticed it and fresh tagged it, then about 7-10 days later it was un-fresh so it disappeared again. No problem.

>> Have I displeased the the Gods of Google?

No.

>>Do I need to wait for a full moon and a fetch a chicken to make amends?

The next full moon probably, but traditional keyword stuffing won't save your soul, although if you make some chicken soup it'll be good for your body.

Shame on you for stuffing your alt tags with keywords. Shame on you because not only is it a clumsy way to seo, but it's a slap in the face to the blind- alt tags are used by site readers which read websites to the blind, and you are subjecting people to keyword, keyword,keyword,keyword over and over.

[angrytree]

Thanks to all for the expert advice!

Kaled - I suppose I deserve the chastisment but, in total honesty I tell you we simply made a mistake out of ignorance. Again, no excuse but, we have always been completely ethical in all our business efforts. I'm a vet of the web since the days of UNIX shell accounts but, I'm very new to the whole SEO world. Since I've never had a site of my own I've cared to promote.

I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE all the time and consideration I've gotten here considering I'm completely new to this community having only signed up today.

Regards,
at

[yowza]

Don't bother writing to Google. I don't think they would care anyway.

You said that your site dropped a few weeks ago, this could be due to Florida and have nothing to do with keyword stuffing.

Check for posts on Florida here in WW. They are everywhere.

[dirkz]

I had a couple of pages that indeed were ranking solely because of several ALT tags, which were really a good description of the image.

Your site disappearing could have something to do with Florida, either generally or specifically because of being not "broad enough" through the keywords repetition.

I would replace them with something useful anyway.