I love alt tags and so do search engines!

[agatlin]

I love alt tags, am happy to use them, and make frequent use of them. I have several questions that someone might be able to answer regarding their use.

1) Which search engines read and incorporate alt tags?

2) What weight (by search engine) or alt tags given in comparison with body text, title tags, etc.

3) What is the maximum number of words that should go into an alt tag?

4) Suppose you have a data-driven site where all pages (including the home page) are generated on the fly. Will it help, hurt, make no difference if the text in the alt tags changes on every visit. (In other words, what if random but relevant keywords are chosen.) Is this considered spam--even the keywords are relevant to the page?

5) what uses of an alt tag are spam and what are not? Where is the line?

6) What are some ways that others have effectively utilized alt tags.

Thanks for your help!

[excell]

Hi, I like alt tags too :) they are very friendly and they help people who surf without images on or use text to voice readers to browse. It is a good idea to put descriptive text about your image or image link. This can be key phrase rich but should not be overboard. Short and the the point is good, nothing worse than mousing over an alt tag that is a mile long. Plain ugly.

I think that *some* search engines index them put am unsure of the weight. I know google indexs them and I *believe* they help with ranking but how much would be anyone's guess.

I try to avoid adding alt tags to transparent gifs that are on a site for structural reasons but do just put a * in the alt tag so that it the code meets W3C standards. (Sometimes the temptation does get the better of me, though:eek: )

[ihelpyou]

hey agatlin, excell makes good points. Do things for your visitors and you will be just fine. If that thing also happens to help you with ranks, so be it. Your visitors are first. With that being said, alt tags are given little weight compared to your content. Use good unique content and good linking methods and you will be much better off than worrying about alt tags. Alt tags should describe the link if possible. A couple of words will do.

[agatlin]

Awesome advice. I will make good use of it.

By "good linking methods", I assume you mean not having too many external ly pointed links to decrease your page rank?

Anthony

[Advisor]

I believe Doug is talking about good internally linking structure for your site.

Alt tags are a great way to describe the page they are pointing to, when used for a graphical link. In other words, when you can't use a text link (or don't want to) you'll often get the same benefit through the use of an alt tag. Of course, the alt tag must exactly describe what it's pointing to, to be considered appropriate. You do need to be considerate of the blind and others who may use text readers, and therefore not stuff your alt tags full of keywords. I admit that I used to go overboard in the past and did also put keywords in transparent gifs (that just happened to be part of the site). But I don't do that any more, as I do believe that would be considered spam (and rightly so). Alan slapped me around for that one awhile back!

Jill

[agatlin]

Thank you Jill. I have not stuffed my alt tags with keywords but have sprinkled them fairly generously. I will go back and review them and prune them where appropriate.

[Advisor]

Make sure they make sense for the graphic that they're being used for also.

J

[Mar]

9or words) which you would recommend for alt tags? I guess you guys are the experts - I've been trying to figure it out on my own, but this might save me a bit of time! Thanks in advance.

[MsSearch]

I usually try to keep them brief....when i rollover an image, i hate seeing a large box popup with a lot of text in it. As a user I certainly don't take the time to read them.

[Mar]

because of accessibility issues for people who listen to the text descriptions/or surf with images switched off - and also because the SEs read 'em too!

I wasn't thinking of creating paragraphs of text - just (say) maximum 60 characters/10 words? - but wanted to be sure that I wouldn't be penalised for overlong alt tag descriptions.
Mar

[Matt B]

Just my experience . . .

In the past I had a couple programmers that loved to stuff keywords in the ALT tags. I had them clean them out when I came on board. My guess from observing the changes is that the penalty outweighs the benefit.

Meaning: You are not heavily rewarded for proper ALT tags, because it is something that you are supposed to do correctly. Just like you aren't rewarded for stopping at a red light, not hitting pedestrians, etc. These are things you are expected to do correctly. You are penalized more heavily if you abuse the ALT tag, so it tends to be reflected more noticably on the negative side than the positive side.

As I said, just my opinion from observation.

[Mar]

I've consistently used small phrases/sentences correctly describing pics etc, and used appropriate words for page links - and then when surfing you come across alt tags which have an extraordinary amount of content - and that got me wondering what was recommended/required/sensible. I guess sometimes instincts prove reliable!

Again - many thanks to all who replied.

Mar

[Advisor]

Ten words would be too many for an alt tag, in my opinion. A simple keyword phrase (2 or 3 words) that described the image or the page your clicking to with that image, is all you really want to do. Much more than that could be considered spamming, imo.

Jill