Image ALT Tags and Search Engine Optimization
There are many little tricks you can utilize to give your site a boost in the search engines. One thing you can do to help your SEO strategy is to properly use image ALT tags on all of the graphics and photos on your web pages.
The ALT attribute was designed for you to enter text telling your site visitors what your graphic is about in case it did not load or they had images turned off. That way, if someone can’t see your image, they can read a few lines of text that tells them what the image is about.
It doesn’t happen often, but it is fairly common for your images not to load on occasion. It may have something to do with your server being down, you may have messed up the code, or it might be due to the type of browser your visitor is using. Sometimes data gets dropped and images just don’t load, but display the standard red X instead.
Therefore using ALT tags for your images should already be one of the best practices that you follow with your website, ensuring that it’s accessible for every person and in all situations. However, for the person interested in SEO you can make use of the ALT attribute to provide additional benefits.
The ALT tag provides an excellent opportunity to include more of your targeted keywords and phrases into your page content. If you write a brief sentence describing every image on your page using your targeted keywords and phrases, you are easily adding more keyword inclusion to your content.
The ALT tags provide a way for you to add more keyword phrases to your web pages without resorting to keyword stuffing or making your site look spammy. Because they are not part of your page content, the extra keywords don’t work against you. That’s why using these image tags should be an important part of your SEO strategy.
Another great benefit is that besides adding more relevant keywords to your page coding, you also will allow yourself to be found in the image search results for a particular query. Now when people check out the images for a product or topic, you are giving yourself a great shot at being shown in those rankings as well.
In this way you can continue to grow your online presence. You will actually be able to drive more traffic to your website as a result of these image searches. People will see a displayed image for a particular search, and either want to see the full size version or want to learn more about its usage and the website that has it.
Using ALT image tags benefits both you and your site visitors. They will still get your message even if your images do not load. You will enjoy the additional search engine listings and SEO benefits that using image ALT tags brings. That is why you should make this technique an essential part of your SEO strategy.
Visit SEO expert Nick Halmonds’ website. To find more great information on internet marketing. Check it out at search engine marketing. You will find great offers on SEO service like 5 cent Directory Submissions.
Tagged with: advertising • business • computers • internet • internet_and_computers • marketing • SEO/SEM • web promotion
Filed under: SEO/SEM
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