SEO Advising Document 2010

ALT Image Tags

SEO Best Practices Guide

 ALT Image Tags

Alt tags are indicators that can be placed internally, within your html,
to describe the photos on your website. These are very important for
search spiders because for now, search spiders have a very hard time
reading images without one. This means that website images are
virtually useless in the world of search without ALT Tags.

There are still many sites and site managers that still don’t allow
seamless integration of ALT Tags when uploading photos. And frankly
some site editors that do allow for integration directly from the editing
tool, can be downright confusing.

No matter the difficulty, getting your images tagged with ALT Tags is
vital to SEO success. If you are in the retail industry it is more than
likely that you are dealing with multiple photos for various products. If
your page has content and it has photos, most of the time those
photos take up a nice portion of the page. Users love to see the
product so the photo is necessary. However, if those photos are not
tagged with ALT tags you are missing out on a great SEO strategy.

Your content will be read, but your photos, most likely will just be a
distraction to the search engine spiders.

Choosing ALT Tags

ALT Tags are short phrases or words that describe what is in the
picture that is displayed on the webpage. They must stay short and
direct. For example: If you have a picture of a green outdoor
backpack, you would label the picture with an ALT Tag = “green
outdoor backpack.” Short, descriptive and direct.

For each page on your site you have a keyword strategy. Every page
targets a different keyword or keywords, so incorporating your ALT
Tags into your keyword strategy is a best practice method.

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For instance take a look at this page below:

http://www.finishline.com/store/product/jordan-men-s-6ixty-plus-
basketball-shoe?categoryId=cat10003&productId=prod649353

The keyword for this page is: Jordan Men’s 6ixty Plus Basketball Shoe

IF you click “View - Source” on the page and hit control F – Type in ALT
– you will find that it is located on the third find, right next to the
keyword for the page. In other words, the ALT tag for this page looks
like this below

<img id="productImage"
src="/store/images/products/lg364806062.jpg" alt="Jordan Men's 6ixty
Plus Basketball Shoe"

The image is placed into the HTML and following the image is an alt=
tag that uses the keyword as the description.

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IT IS BEST STRATEGY to include your keyword strategy for all ALT tags.
That is why it is important to have a keyword strategy for all of your
web pages. As you keywords and phrases change, don’t forget to
change the ALT tags with them.

Now an ALT Tag does not always have to be the keyword that you are
using for the page.

If you have a page on Christmas and Christmas Decorations is your

keyword, but the picture on the page is of a Christmas Tree…Then it is
fine to use Christmas Tree as your ALT Tag. Why? Because even
though it is not your keyword, it is relevant to your keyword.
So how do implement ALT Tags?

Here is an example of the HTML used on the above page to implement

an ALT Tag.

<img id="productImage"
src="/store/images/products/lg364806062.jpg" alt="Jordan Men's 6ixty
Plus Basketball Shoe"

ALT tags are fairly easy to setup if you have a site editor that presents
it clean cut. Take a look at your website internally and find a page
with a photo. Once you spot the photo browse around your editor
options to see if you can find a box or column for “ALT Tag” or “ALT
description.” If you find this box next to your photo, then you can
easily add ALT tags to your photos. Just type in the photo keyword you
want to use (most likely associated with the keyword or keyword
phrase chosen for that particular page).

*** Your Web Designer should easily know how to implement ALT tags
and it is important to notify them and tell them to implement ALT Tags
for all images that you add to the site and all images that already
exist.

ALT Image Tag Usage

The ALT Image tag is an extension on the IMG (Image) tag used in standard HTML
and is specified with the optional ALT combined in the IMG tag.

Usage:

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HTML Tag: "IMG"
General Usage: <IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your Alternative Text Here">
Note: URL is a standard web address to an image

Example Usage
Image Tag Before
<IMG SRC="suntan.gif">

Image Tag After

<IMG SRC="suntan.gif" ALT="Suntan Lotion by Sunshine Limited">

Accommodate for the Visually Impaired

ALT Image tags also make it possible for the visually impaired to
understand the images on your website. This way they are able to
read the image

Use ALT Tags for Button too

All of the buttons on your webpage most likely already have an ALT
tag associated with them, but in case they do not, make sure that all
your buttons contain an ALT tag. (Buttons are the clickable links on
your site that are not just hyperlink text. Most buttons are found in
the main navigation bar).

**** Not all images are simply images. Sometimes there is an

exception to your images, like your image is an actual link. In this
case you would want to use a title description within the HTML. On the
next page is a perfect example of what I mean.

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My Photo is a Link – Should I still use ALT Tags?

If you’re even slightly familiar with HTML language, you know about
the image tag <IMG> that is used to display pictures in web pages.
This tag supports two similar attributes – TITLE and ALT – that are both
supposed to describe the image in words.
These attributes are important as they impact image search rankings
but confusing too because we often don’t know whether to use TITLE
or ALT or both attributes when describing images.

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Luckily, the rule is pretty simple – always add the ALT attribute to
your images but include the TITLE attribute only if the image is
a link. I have tried to illustrate this with an image of a McDonald’s
Burger.
Case A: The burger image is not linking anywhere so we just use the
ALT attribute describing the image.
Case B: The burger image links to the nutrition section on the
McDonald’s website so we also include a TITLE attribute that gives the
visitor an idea about the linked page. Note that ALT attribute continues
to describe the image as in Case A. (photo and info courtesy of
http://www.labnol.org/internet/using-alt-img-attributes-in-image-tags/5450/)

ALT tags are very important for your SEO rankings. Your site will
benefit from having all of its images tagged. It is best to leave this
work up to a web designer as far as the actual implementation goes.

What you can do - What you and your SEO advisor can do is come up
with a keyword strategy for every one of your pages. Again, a
keyword is the main word you expect people to use in order to find
your specific page through search engines. Once you have decided
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this, create an excel sheet of the photos on your site. Place your
keyword focused ALT tags in the document and pass it off to your web
designer to implement. Or if you are good with HTML or your site
editor is fairly simple, you can try to implement them yourself.

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