Use of Alternative text

[bd072749]

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

[stymiee]

Alt attributes have very little value in SEO thanks to keyword stuffing so don't expect wonderful things to happen for using them. Having said that, 80 characters or less would be the most appropriate. You can be sure the search engines stop reading them at some point as they never should be long.

Just like alt attributes meta tags are virtually worthless. But you should still make them and a few sentences are appropriate. You'll get various estimates as to how many characters it should be. Keep it under 150 and you should be safe with every search engine.

[buddhu]

Sorry to disagree, but the "description" meta tag is far from worthless. The description of your page is sometimes used to display text beneath your link in the SERPs, and can have a BIG impact on clickthrough rates.

If your site has been lumbered with a lame DMOZ description, for example, you can now instruct SEs not to use the DMOZ description. If you have a good description in your tags you can see a significant increase in clickthrough.

[dharrison]

I agree with buddhu. Altho meta descriptions have been devalued thanks to spammers and the misguided, they are not completely worthless. I still include them and in some places they are still in use. In my early SEO days I was taught to keep it below 175 characters, but a page description can normally get covered in under 150 characters. Nowadays it obviously helps if the page description reflects the visible text on the page.

Ditto with alt text: keep it short and descriptive and if one of your main key phrases can be used then all the better, but if not don't stuff it.

I would say that alt text is used by visitors that have text-only browsers or have images disabled on their normal browser, but in your case, that might be a bit pointless. LOL

HTH

[bd072749]

Thanks for the replies and the information. My site is mostly photos. There is some text, but it consists of one story, an Updates page and a php message board. I don't expect much from regular searches. Where my site scores in in image searches. That is where I get so many first page and first position listings. What I am trying to do is is boost my image search results.
Thanks again, all of you have been very helpful.
Bob
http://VanessaBound.com

[incrediblehelp]

Thanks for the replies and the information.

Make sure you have relevant text around the photo to, that seems to help.

Curious do your images link to themselves (opens the image in another web page) or do they link to another webpage all together?

I have heard those that link to themselves do much better in image searches.