alt text?

re: search engine placement?

[australiangirl]

HI All,

and for those of us in the NE, happy shoveling.
I have a question re:linking. I rcvd memo from web master re: how she would like her link to read on our site re: the Alt text, what is this? there was a lot of code with it and she says it really helps with SE placement.

AS always Thank you!
I have learned a lot in these forums.

[tigger]

happy shoveling :) Just seen it on the news looks like fun NOT

Alt tag is an alternative text to the picture so when you mouse over an image a text description will show, some search engines will collect alt tags as additional keywords, but Google won't

[ukgimp]

Hello

Hover your mouse over any of the image on this page. You will see the "alt" text. It stands for alternative text, to be of most use to people who browse with images turned off.

The code looks something like this:

<img src="image.jpg" alt="Something descriptive">

Its benefits wrt to search engines are not going to help you too much. They used to have more of an impact but abuse got their effectiveness removed. Avoid spamming them:

<img src="image.jpg" alt="word word word word word etc....">

Just looks spammy and "might" not do you any favours.

Cheers

[vitaplease]

australiangirl,

[webmasterworld.com...]

for what works and does not work with alt texts regarding Google.

[australiangirl]

Thank you everyone,
As I have been asked to add to alt text for a recip. site, should I do it? or will Google think it's spam?

[paynt]

Hi australiangirl, I would be asking myself a few questions first starting with what is my policy for my site. Personally I do not link with images between sites, second I stay clear of complicated codes and three I only add to my site what will work for my site and that includes alt tags. You might go back to them and suggest a great title with description for their site, one that works for them and works for you since it will influence your page content. A simple alt tag will not adversely affect your site to any degree but ask yourself what you gain in adding it, how it will add to the theme of your site, and balance that with any negatives.

[JayC]

I'm in agreement with paynt, and would add that even for the site you're linking to a text link containing their keywords would be more advantageous than an image link with keywords in the alt text.