I understand that stuffing or using hidden keywords are negetive strategy. But does stuffing keywords in <img alt=""> tag considered as keyword spaming or using keyword in remarks? please advice.
Why stuff at all? Just describe the image using your keyword(s) in the alt tag. If you're targetting digital cameras 'digital camera photo' or 'photo of digital camera' would be fine. Easy peasy. Pete
I've used alt tag "stuffing" before to some good effect, however, like any good search engine, I believe the major ones picked up on it and relegated my higher ranking status to a lower one.
Use the alt img tag sensibly, but definately don't go overboard with it, it is considered spamming if you did...
a keyword in the alt alt does help, but does require common sense, if the link anchor text says "seo" and the link points to a page about seo you wouldnt put a keyword in alt text about apples and oranges. remember the sites is for your visiters not the search engines fill the alt tags with something that would be helpfull to them.
I use title tags and alt tags on images. This way when you move the cursor over it will actually say your description. alt tags are for blind visitors (people and bots) or for when the pic doesn't appear/error.
Speaking strictly from an SEO point of view it is my understanding that the only alt tag that Google uses is the alt tag that is associated with a clickable image. In this case the alt tag is the equivalent of anchor text on a text link. However if you use the bCentral directory they will suggest that you have alt tags on all images before submitting the site to their directory. So possibly other SEs are using them as content. Now as to stuffing, this should never be done. The alt tag should be a two or three word keyword phrase that is relevant to the image it is applied to. Someone mention the title attribute. This is a useful tag for the visitor and possibly for site navigation, but I've never heard of the SEs using this tag. I'm not sure why not, but that seems to be the conventional wisdom.
I agree with compar. Use it if its presence makes sense. In any case, the alt tag cannot be the equivalent of a text for most search engines and an image with an alt tag linking to another page is a combining weight for an <a href: text for some search engines, like MSN.
Thank you Compar. I got the point. I know that if link is pointing to SEO i wudnt use Apple or banana as alt text. i have seen some good and high ranked sites using keyword phrases as alt text with non clickable image such as logos and other header images. and one very big site is using them as remarks in the page. so was wondering if this kind of stuffing considered as spaming or not. b'coz it definetly better than hidden text or mini. text.
There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Use them properly and they will never do you any harm. But as I explained above I think the SEO value is limited.
Would it be considered stuffing if you used a title tag for, lets say, the page title and then used the alt tag for a good description?
I assume you mean the title attribute tag that is associated with an image. If so I think you are proposing to put way too much information in them. The function of the title tag attribute is to give the image a name for people using browsers with the graphics shut off, or to aid the blind or other handicapped users. The alt tag should not show when you mouse over the image, but through a non standard compliant issue with IE it does show in this browser. Try firefox or netscape and they don't show. Now as I've said the alt tag for a clickable image has the same function as anchor text for a text link. So you would never want to put more in an alt tag than a normal keyword phrase. Why would you want to repeat the page title and the description? They belong in the head section and won't do you any good in image attributes.
You can use use both Title tag for page description and lt tag with images to describe Images. But as far as I know There is no alt tag for the page itself.
I would disagree, and say the alt tag is read by SEs (Google included), even if it is not a clickable image. In my experience, the weight given by Google to simple alt tags is quite high. I once had a page which was getting 5k uniques a day. I pointed a lot of co-op weight (80k) at it for a term which had 20k searches/day... For all secondary phrases, each with anywhere from 500 to 3-4k searches per day, all I used was image alts (Exact maches for the many three word phrases). This page ended up ranking for every term. Also, on many instances I saw Google showing the Alt text in its SERP snippits which leads me to believe that they do benefit. However, as a previous poster mentioned, overdoing it could be a cuase for the page getting partially sandboxed and dropped to the third page of the results. I've had this happen also. Not sure whether the cause was alt stuffing, or too many links.. or competitors bitching about my page.
I remember somewhere Jakob Nielsen telling that Alt Tags are for telling visually impaired people what the image is actually showing. If it is symbolising something then that can be described in the long description tag. Previously <----comments---> tag was abused with keyword stuffing defeating the purpose of helping the developer telling what code does what. Now-a-days alt tag is most often abused like that. This sort of nonsense should go quickly. Yes one or two key words can be included: For instance, Compar's previous pic can have alt text such as this: SEO Bob Wakfer gives a smirky smile and not this: SEO Canada, SEO...blah blah etc Also alt tags serve another purpose: If for some reason the image doesn't load, the visitor can read what is the image portraying and what it does if it is clicked.