Hi all. 1 / Does alt text help improve SEO atributes like keyword density 2/ When naming graphical content does the 'physical name' actually matter, ie: mysitekeyword.gif? and how about it's reference name, set from within the HTML editor? 3/ Who would win in a fight?: href with relevant anchor text VS relevantly named imagemap with alt text??? 4/ Does Google decipher links contained within headers and footers (included files) as many links on different pages?? Thanks in advance Mark
1. Yes, it helps not only give weight to keywords on your site, it will help your images appear in Google images. Alt is used for text based browsers as well to display the content of the image they can't see. 2. Yes, the name of the image file will also give some weight to most search engines. 3. Anchor text gives more weight than alt text. 4. The crawler will only see what your entire page loads, SSI includes, PHP includes, etc will all appear to be open page when opened.
1 / Does alt text help improve SEO atributes like keyword density Yes. But not to the same extent. 2/ When naming graphical content does the 'physical name' actually matter, ie: mysitekeyword.gif? Yes, for some SE. 3/ Who would win in a fight?: href with relevant anchor text VS relevantly named imagemap with alt text??? href 4/ Does Google decipher links contained within headers and footers (included files) as many links on different pages?? no
It can, but the primary use of the alt attribute is to identify what the image is - meaning it's primarily used for accessibility, not SEO. If you care about things like image search, then yes. But I block my images directory via a robots.txt file so that doens't bother me. I do however, name them appropriately so I know what I'm looking for when staring at my FTP client. What do you mean by "reference name"? Are you talking about the title attribute (which is used to improve the usability of the page by providing additional information to describe what the image is about)? The anchor, hands down. You mean like your main and footer menus? Those are considered to be outbound links (but since they go to each page on the site it really doesn't matter much for what I think you're asking about here). Not to mention those people using screen readers. Mark, if you want to learn more about SEO, I strongly suggest you read the Search Engine Optimization FAQ over at SitePoint [link: sitepoint.com], and then follow the links provided at the end of the opening post (all the replies are just that, replies - they are not part of the FAQ), especially the one to Chris Beasley's SEO Guide at websitepublisher.net/seo-guide