Image alt tags

Hey all, I've been doing quite a bit of SEO on my site for the past 2 months, and I've managed to get myself a nice ranking boost. I've done nothing evil, mostly updating my content with keywords, and doing some mod_rewrite things to keep my URL's nice.

Now I've been running some different tools and many of them complain because my site has about 80 graphics on it, all without alt tags. (These graphics make up the borders around my flash, my footer, etc...)

My question is, should I place alt tags on these images and fill them with keywords? I believe this would help ranking, but I wouldn't want to have TOO many keywords on a page, either.

Another thought I had would be to randomize the keywords that are placed in the alt tags via PHP. I could choose from a list of 500 "phrases" and randomly drop them into the image alt tags. Would this take things too far? Should I leave those images without alt tags? Any insight would be great here...

DS

 

Yes, I think ALT-tags should be filled with KWs. Perhaps you can use variants of one particular page-relevant KW in order not to get too spammy on that page.

 

You can also use "Title" tags for your images.

 

Wrong.

Alt tags should be used to describe the image in question. Not to stuff keywords in.

KW stuffing will hurt you more in the long run, and will also do little to nothing for your rankings in the short term.

 

I agree. I also wonder why do so many people try and cheat the system.

 

Well, that was exactly my question, but it still is not answered. The tools I have seen try to get you to keep your image alt tags at a high kw density, but when you have a site that is made up of 100's of little border-images, an alt tag does not make sense. Obviously I do not want to do any black-hat SEO, since I've proved thus far that I can make significant gains in the SERPs just by adjusting my content, URL's, and title tags, with little to no effect on the end user's readability of the site. But at the same time, I do not want to be penalized for tons of images w/o alt tags. My standard practice thus far has included using alt tags on any image that has a "theme" to it, and pluggin in proper keywords there, but would those not be diluted by the other images that lack alt tags?

I am trying to find a happy-medium here, without feeling spammy, nor hurting my users experiences. (I have far too many active visitors daily to make them mad, since they pay my bills...)

DS

 

To date, I have not heard of anyone being "Penalized" for not using "Alt" tags.

 

The alt tags on your images should contain KWs if it is relevant to that picture.
ie. if the image is a product then use the product name, which is probably your KW, or use the KW and product name.

Some people have software that reads the page to them and this software reads ALT text to describe images to them. This is why I like to either describe what the picture is or use some (not stuffing full of) KW to let google know.

I would think this would help with Google Image searches as well.

And you should definitely use ALT text for images that are links. Especially graphical menus. This would almost act like anchor text for the image link. Although not weighted as heavily by Google I'm sure.

These seem to be the practices I go by because it makes it useful to everyone who visits and SEs. But this doesn't mean this is the best option for SEO, as I am no master at SEO. But I do get good results.

 

Some browsers like Mozilla FireFox don't display the "Alt" text but do display the "Title" text.

 

Or you can get this Popup ALT attributes extension for Firefox.

 

darqShadow,
if you want to be politically correct then all your images should have alt-tags, and they 'should' have relevant descriptions..slighly exagerated perhaps.
However if it is for border image you should have a blank alt tag..i believe the code is alt=" " sometimes people use alt="" but i`m pretty sure thats wrong.
hope this helps.

GEM

 

You can get done nowadays for not enabling your site for disabled people.

ALT tags are indeed just for that. Describe the image in a grammatically correct, easy to read and accurate sentence. This will normally result in keyword rich tags anyways because your images are likely to be relevant.

However, you are talking about hundreds of spacers. Obviously, someone with a screen reader isn't waiting for the voice to read our millions of KWs from those.

I would combine it. Just say something like 'MyDomain MyServiceorProduct(KW) image spacer'. This way you may benefit from the extra KWs but still mention it's a spacer, not pissing off access standards groups etc. It still won't be nice to listen to but at least you've done something in both parties' interest.