I own the adult site, http://vanessabound.com
It is mostly photographs with one story and very little other text.
I didn't know what I was doing when I built my site and all I had to use at the time was Netscape Composer. I didn't know then, that I could just link to jpegs. I though I had to put each photo on an html page (I've learned a lot since then). Actually, this was very fortunate. Composer made me use alternative text or specifically tell it not to. I used the key words that I wanted as the alt. text. I found that this was what the search engines picked up. I am going back now and trying to beef up my alt. text and coordinating this text for the alt. text for my thumbnails on my gallery indexes.
My question is how long can the alt. text be for a photo? I've heard 80 characters. Is it wise to have more characters or should I keep it shorter than 80 characters?
Also, for my description meta tag, how many characters should this be? Can I go for several sentences? These two things have been what all search engines have used to list my site. Actually, I have been getting many first page listings and sometimes first position placement with just my alt. text and description meta tags.
I still have much to learn.
Thanks,
Bob