Alt Tags

Are they still worth it

[lloyd]

Alt tags do they still work?
Would like to hear what you think.

[jackofalltrades]

For the purposes of accessibilty for users who with visual disabilities they are pretty essential. The ALT tag displays the text for the graphic. Same for text browsers.

The SEO advantages are debatable, but id still include them for accessibility reasons.

JOAT

[Bernie]

Alt-Tags as an on-page factor do not disservice if you don't overdo it, especially if you have only few text on your page, see it as one little contribution among many.

interesting is also the question about ALT-Tags as an off-page factor, how much counts:

<a href="http://www.mydomain.com"><img src="grafic.gif" alt="Keyword"></a>

compared to:

<a href="http://www.mydomain.com">Keyword</a>

I think it helps but the impact is weaker in example no. 1 than in example no. 2.

[Marcia]

No idea with others, but Google's been showing some alt text in the description snippets.

JOAT makes a good point with accessibility, and it's an issue with HTML validation, too.

Bernie, it would be nice if it counts off-page, sometimes a little graphic just seems more attractive and effective for some links. Theres also the title= attribute for links, which is reported to have weight.

[Bernie]

marcia,

is that the synthax you mean:

<img src="hello.gif" title="keyword">

?

TIA

[agerhart]

Bernie,

I believe that this is what Marcia was talking about:

<a href="widgets.com" title="Best Widgets in Town">

[Birdman]

<img src="hello.gif" title="keyword">

Yes, that is correct. As far as alt, I think it does carry weight. I just watched a site take #3 and #4 for one of my main keywords. They stuffed the same keywords in 40 small icons scattered about the page. Kind of angers me because the #1 and #2 slots were taken by a site that uses hidden text, go figure. Our site is pretty clean and dropped from #1 to #27 :(

[glengara]

This is just a hunch based on what happened to me at the last update, but I wouldn't be surprised if 'over-optimized' pages will suffer some penalty in the future.
Keyword stuffing of Alts, is, IMO, a prime example of 'over-optimizing', so though I understand your anger, Birdman, I hope you're not too tempted!

[Birdman]

Thanks glengara. I'm not tempted to resort to cheating, but I did go on a major link hunt. I'll fight back within the rules.

I do use keywords in alt tags, but only to describe the image itself. If I have icons, I just put a blank alt="" for validation purposes.

[fathom]

<a href="link" title="link"><img src="link.gif" alt="link"></a>

Displayed "hidden text" alt is default.

It is best to keep to single, double, triple and maximum four words and not repeating more than twice (in exact order).

Also IE parses in short paragraphs --around 50 - 60 characters per line and mouse pointer defines "start of" or "end of" paragraph depending on which side of the view screen is the widest.

Netspace parses as a single string of text and mouse pointer randomly defines start or end of string.

The text in Netscape can run right off the view screen.

Keep them short! :)