so how important is the inclusion of keywords within alt tags?

[DoubleV]

?

[scottiecl]

Hi Valeria and welcome! :hi:

It is important to accurately describe the picture the alt tag is attached to. Alt tags are designed for people who either can't see the images or prefer not to see the images on their screen.

Now, if you have a picture of a dog, and an alt tag that says, "Sassy- the office dog" it doesn't hurt to put in "Sassy- the office dog for Brown Dog Software Development" in your tag. But attaching an alt tag to Sassy that says "software sales, software development, database design and enhancement" would not be appropriate and, if reviewed by humans, would be tagged as spam.

[ihelpyou]

Yes, and also good if the text describles the 'linking page' if the image is actually linking to another page.

Keep it as short as possible and make it relevant and you should have no problems.

Although, must add that the alt tag is not as important as other aspects of your content/page.

[sanity]

Welcome valeria_vi :hi:

Scottie's right. If not for any other reason Alt tags are important for those who have images turned off/can't see them.

Having said that it also makes sense to ensure that when you describe the image you use keyword rich descriptions.

[Advisor]

As far as the search engines go, alt tags are given a little bit of weight. Not nearly as much as visible text, however. If you don't have keywords in them, it probably won't make or break your site. With the exception of navigation buttons that are graphical. I would definitely try and describe the page you're pointing to, within the alt tag -- using keywords if possible.

But for images that aren't clickable, they really don't need to have keyword rich alt tags, imo.

Jill

[bigDugan]

From: Including an image: the IMG element (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/objects.html#h-13.2)
alt = text [CS]
For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this attribute specifies alternate text. The language of the alternate text is specified by the lang attributeIMO none of your imgs need kws, just short text that describes the image. If that short text includes a kw, goodie for you.

:hi: Welcome valeria_vi!

[french dread]

Alt tags can be very useful if well used and not abused.
I am webmaster of www.earthcultureroots.com, a rasta information website and online shop.
One page ( http://www.earthcultureroots.com/shop2/rasta_tee_shirts.html )
is featuring teeshirts. There is no big content as it it look like a catalog. But on the tees, I have added relevant alt tags such as "haile selassie tee", "lion of judah tee" etc and it ranks kinda well and brings trafic (of course there not 1 billion competitor pages but it works well)

exemples:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=HIM+tees
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=rasta+tees
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=marley+tees

It allows also people with poor connections to have an idea of the pics before donwloaded and can be useful to attract trafic from google image search