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Increasing Your Site's Ranking And Optimization Through IMG Tags
By Patrick Hare
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-08-05
As many people already know, search engine optimization usually doesn't have one single factor that instantly fixes search engine rankings. Instead, there are a series of small items, both on and off-page, that contribute to the "picture" that a search engine has in its electronic brain. When it comes to pictures, search engines still aren't good at image recognition, so they need help with classifiers known in HTML code as "alt text" or "alt tags."
Properly written alt tags still have a place in SEO best practices. While many search engine professionals have ignored them in favor of bigger factors, they can still be the fractional difference that puts your site ahead of your competitor's. Fractions count in the world of SEO, so here are some tips regarding how alt tags should be treated.
- Don't stuff your alt tags. In the past, people used to hide content in image alt tags, so you could hover over a picture and get a paragraph or an extended list of keywords separated by commas. The alt text should describe the image, or simply parrot any words that are embedded in it.
- If your site was built a few years ago, or you had work done on it in the past, you should check all of your alt tags to ensure that they aren't spammy or inaccurate.
- Alt tag content should be original. If you have multiple tags with the same content, it should be changed, or perhaps deleted from less important images.
- If your navigation uses images instead of text, there should be alt tags matching each image. Ideally, you may want to consider using text for navigation in the future.
- Not every image needs alt text, especially if you use graphical elements to build a page. You might confuse the search engine if you have tags like "rounded upper right corner" and "tracking pixel."
- Whenever possible, don't exclude your images directory in the robots.txt file. The alt tag describes the image, and services like Google Image Search use this information to put you in results that may be seen in various places, including the top of a general search query. There are people who make quite a bit of money by having products listed in image search.
- If the image is of a product, include the brand name and part number in the alt tag.
- Alt text does not have to be as complex as Wikipedia makes it, but it should still adequately describe the image, using a selection of relevant keywords.
- Use proper punctuation and sentence structure for longer tags. Sales messages ("Buy now and receive FREE SHIPPING") usually are not recommended in alt text. Most people won't see it, and search engines may downgrade your page for being spammy.
- If your image is linked, then the alt text of the image serves as a version of anchor text, which defines the link. For instance, your company logo may link back to the homepage, so your alt text should be relevant to your home page keywords. Note that if you have an alt tag that is relevant to your current page, and are linking the image somewhere else, you may be diminishing your page's relevance. In this case the alt tag should be rewritten to match the target page's topic.
Alternative text for images goes back to the principle of usability, since pages would often load very slowly, so the alt text would tell you what you were about to see. It is still helpful for visually impaired people who want to use the internet, and should not be omitted for any image that is important to your site. As with any content, consideration should be given to how the keywords in the tags blend with the rest of the work on the page, so you don't end up with high keyword density or keyword blurring.
As we stated above, alt text may not be the "smoking gun" that solves your SEO dilemma, but it should not be neglected. Anything that helps a search engine spider understand your site and its content is going to be an effective part of your SEO strategy. As search engine algorithms get more complex, they may indeed be able to decipher the context of your images, and a picture that matches its description is going to have an advantage over one that does not.
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About the Author:
Patrick Hare has been managing online and offline marketing projects since 1999. From 2005 to present, he has been with Scottsdale Arizona's Web.com Search Agency (formerly Submitawebsite). Patrick provides Search Engine Optimization and Marketing advice to in-house customers and Web.com Jacksonville’s web design group.
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