Even the best web sites are useless if no one can find them! Here is a tip professionals use- on how to set up your site to be search-engine friendly by using alt tags and titles. To understand what a search engine "spider" sees when it crawls across your site, you have to keep in mind that the spider only understands text. . This means that if your site is heavy on pictures and short on written words, the spider won't really understand what your site is all about. It needs clues, and those clues need to be written out as clearly as possible. How do you do that without adding paragraphs of text and revising your great layout? It's not as difficult as it seems, but does take a bit of planning and logical thinking. The first tip is to take advantage of ALL of the opportunities on your page to add titles and "alt" tags. These tags are invisible to site visitors, but the spiders love them. If you are designing your own pages, then you already have seen where these tags and titles go, but maybe you have ignored them. BIG mistake! Use every one, and fill them with relevant words (keywords) that you want your site to rank for in the search engines. If you use a web designer, then provide the designer with one title and one alt tag description for each photograph on the page. This includes the header image, and any custom button images on the page. Oh yes-- and don't forget a descriptive title for the page itself! What kind of descriptions? Here's an example, using an art gallery site's "exhibitions" page: The page title could be "Monthly fine art exhibitions at the Famous Art Gallery"; The header image title could be "Famous Art Gallery in Bigtown USA Presents Modern And Traditional Fine Art" and have an alt tag description of "Fine Art Exhibitions By International Artists at the Famous Art Gallery"; The photo of a painting could be titled "Blue and Gold Sofa-Size Fine Art Painting By Award Winning Artist" and have an alt tag description "Award winning sofa-size art"; A navigation button labeled "Artists" could have a title "Contemporary artists showing at the Famous Art Gallery" and an alt description of "Modern and Traditional Fine Artists Showing in Bigtown USA." Use all of the alt tags and titles available on your page. Any text, photo or button which is linked to another URL will also give you the opportunity to add a descriptive phrase to the link. So, do you get the idea of how easily you can let the spiders know what your site is all about, without redoing everything on the pages and writing copious paragraphs? Use as many descriptive keywords and phrases as possible to get the point across. Remember- photo tags and titles are invisible to site visitors, but the titles may appear if their cursor rests on an image. So use the descriptions that make sense when a viewer sees them pop up. It will add a professional flair to your site, and add value to the users' experience.