Hey folks, I recently submitted a complaint to Google because of the "sandbox" effect that I appear to be having. My waroftheworldsfilm.com site ranks in the top 10 for my keywords in MSN and Yahoo (#2), yet, I can't seem to rank above 300 in google. Having said that, this is there reply to me: "We briefly reviewed your site and noticed that it has a lot of images.Because our crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics, you shouldn't use images to display important names, content, or links. Use ALT tags if the main content and keywords on your page can't be formatted in regular HTML." First of all, my site DOES not have a lot of images as compared to about 99% of the other sites out there. I get emails all the time from people tell me that I am not using enough graphics...and that the site is too plain. Secondly, none of my images (with the exception of the top banner) contain graphical text, content, or links. I use text for links, content and "names" (I am assuming they meant 'keywords'). Third, they mention that I should use ALT tags for the main content and keywords.....I thought that was what we are told NOT to do? Well, I am just alittle upset about the sandbox, but maybe I am at fault after all? Comments?
Sounds like a form letter, Larry and Sergey were on 60 Minutes and could not write a fresh one for you, so they sent out a standard form letter. I would bet they are just testing you with tough love at this point to test your dedication.
ALT tags are definetely helpful, a must for a good SEO, so do use them. Still, I don't think they exactly have the situation under control, the algorythm is rob so complicated that they surely have problems making it work as they would like it to.
My site ranked between 3xx~6xx during the first 4 months, it completely disappeared when it's supposed to get out of the sandbox. Now, I don't care about my keyword any more
ALT tags are definitely helpful and so are TITLE tags when used for links. All images should have an ALT tag. And all links should preferably have a TITLE tag (which is slightly different from the anchor text) which allows you to pack some more keywords in there for that same text link.
I experience the same with some some of my sites. I found Yahoo and MSN produce better results...like more of what I actually want. Where a lot of time the top sites on Google are just spammed to the top.
One note regarding ALT tags on images... Google doesn't read ALT tags on unlinked images. Therefore, all of my images are linked to somewhere -- usually to the page they are on!
I think you need to add more structure to your page: use H1, H2, H3 to indicate to google what your document is about. For example, the titles of the posts in your middle column have bold tags around them. Do you think google looks at your site through a visual browser, or do you think it reads the source code of your page? A b tag doesn't tell google what your page is about, a H1, H2 tag does. Look at the source code of your page, and try to understand it. Can you read your page by looking at the code, or do you need it visually displayed to understand what's important and what's not?
Will, Are you sure about this? What's your source. Do you mean that Google won't 'count' the alt tags, or that they won't index them at all?
How well does the title tag gets spidered? For instance, would this work: <a href="http://www.digitalpoint.com" title="Webmaster Forum">DigitalPoint</a>
Will the title get spidered?? Is this the question?? IMO, it will as there's no reason why it won't. Moreover, it leads to a better design structure as well, 'cos you can have a short anchor text focusing on specific keywords and a longer description to explain what the link is about.
Indeed, I'm not sure if the title tag gets spidered. I use it in one of my sites, but i've not seen any big improvements using it. It sure ads more description to the link than just the anchor text.