Alt text and Meta Text

Does it make any difference these days

[UK_Web_Guy]

I know there are a lot of different opinions on these subjects, but it would be good to hear peoples latest thoughts.

1. Does alt text contributed to the SEO of a page on Google? I heard somewhere that google only now counts this when the alt text is used on an image with an external link on it.

2. Do you think google take the keywords meta tag into account at all?

[John_Caius]

At the recent SEO conference, only Inktomi said that it took any notice of the keywords meta tag. Google doesn't, neither do any of the other major players. It's also highly likely that alt text is ignored, except where it's an image link where the alt text is considered like anchor text in a text link.

[Netizen]

Whether the alt tag is useful for SEO or not you should try to use it as it was meant - alternative, relevant, text for those who can't see the images. This is just good practice for web accessibility, etc, and if it has the by product of being good for SEO so much the better!

[John_Caius]

Precisely. :)

[sanuk]

Hi,

Beware that some search engines nowadays use the keyword meta tag as your indication of important words that also appear on the visible text of the body of your page.

I am not talking about the Google style search engine, but about the thousands of local smaller search engines, directories and the many niche Meta-Search engines.

These smaller engines do not store the complete text of your page but cut at 50 to 200 words. If one of your important words would be Nr. 225 then it would not be noticed. But with this "Preference Tag" it would be stored.

Words that are in the Keyword-Tag and that appear in a certain density in the bodt text of the page are considered important for your page.

Also do not forget that these thousands of little niche search engines still use the Title-Tag and description-Tag as the text to show in their directories.

If you are only blindly looking at Google, then Ok forget about those Meta-Tags, but what if one day. . . . .?

Regards,
Sanuk