Optimizing Your Website: Alt Tags
Always include alt tags whenever you have images on your pages! Alt tags tell search engines what the image is showing. This will help your page be crawled and the information to be easily gleaned. It also allows people who have their images switched off to know what they would see if the images were on as well as allowing disabled visitors to hear what is on the screen.
Example:
Mouse over the image below and you will see the words the search engines use to determine what the image shows and the words that screen readers and people without images switched on will read.
The source code for this image reads:
<img src="making-money-online-articles.jpg" alt="work at home mother sitting at her computer holding her baby" width="100" height="66" />
Without the alt tag in place all this important information would all be missing!
- Choose your keywords and key phrases carefully
- Write for your readers, not for the keywords
- Embrace the title tag
- Keep your content focused
- Check your spellings, punctuation and grammar
- Link your site's internal pages
- Include a sitemap
- Utilize your site footer
- Use the nofollow tag
- Use the target=blank tag
- Use title tags and alt tags appropriately
- Always include alt tags when you include images
- Use your page code to your best advantage
- Interlink between your websites
- Link out
- Offer a links/ useful resources page
- Get links from high page rank sites
- Avoid reciprocal linking
- Increase your page views
- Include images
- Submit your site to search engine and blog directories