Using meta tags on a photo gallery slideshow

How to do it without SE penalties?

[isorg]

I am making a photo-gallery site, and the client has stated that he wants basically, just the photo on a plain black background. Minimal text, just some navigation... like a slide-show maybe.

However, I am struggling to decide what to do with the meta tags on the page. I don't want to put keywords, description etc. in the metatags if these don't appear in the page itself. On the other hand I don't want to leave the metatags empty. Also, don't think it's wise to cloak the text these days :-)

So, any ideas on how to have meaningful metatags that will describe what the photo is about, even if these words don't appear on the actual page?!

Thanks in advance.

[Marshall]

Use the words that are in or related to: Site Name, Page Title, and image alt="" tag. Should be no problem as long as it is relevant.

Marshall

[penders]

I would have thought the SE's will place a lot more weight on actual page content and comparatively little weight to the description meta tag (if any). So, IMHO the SE penalty is not having the text on the page in the first place.

If the requirement is to have minimal text, is there a requirement to have these pages indexed at all by the SE's?

You could experiment with the longdesc attribute of the img tag in addition to alt etc.?

You could still have the descriptive text in a hidden div which is displayed as a tooltip type of thing? This descriptive text could be shown when printed, if required.

[pageoneresults]

I am making a photo-gallery site, and the client has stated that he wants basically, just the photo on a plain black background. Minimal text, just some navigation...

Hmmm, I'd be more apt to go back to the client and explain to them the benefits of surrounding that image with relevant content. I'd let them know that without it, the performance of that page will suffer considerably and the alternatives to displaying that content may or may not be in their best interests. Heck, you only need a few paragraphs of content for each image, that is not that much. But, the more the merrier as they say. And, when it comes to Image Galleries, the text around that image plays a "very important role" in the process.