alternative text

[Farhan]

Hi everyone!
i ve seen using keyword in alternative text as a common practice. Do the spiders read these alternative texts as body text or gives them a low weightage.

I tried this in one of my site.. i repeated one of my main keyword phrase as an alternative text wherever possible. will the SE (espaically Google) take this as spamming?

[Advisor]

Alt tags can be read by some of the search engine spiders, and some of these do seem to give them some weight. However, they are definitely no substitute for visible text, just one of those bonus things you can do to help boost your rankings. Be sure not to go overboard with your keyphrases in the alt tags, but it is okay to put keyphrases in them.

Remember, however, alt tags are there for people who have their graphics turned off, and/or those with visual difficulties that use a text reader on their site. If your site has too many alt tags that are simply keyphrases, it will be difficult for those people to follow. My basic rule of thumb is to try and not go overboard with these tags as far as keyphrases go. Do try and make as much sense with them as possible.

Jill

[glengara]

I think it was Jill who suggested using the page title, if it contained a keyword/phrase and there weren't too many images on the page. As well as including image description of course.

[Advisor]

Yep, that would be me. I do often use the info in the Title tag (or a similar version of it) for my alt tags. Just a quick and dirty way of doing them if I don't feel like thinking about them too much!

Jill