ALT images

[divicohen]

Hello,
Should I input Alt text? would it help rankings? I have placed some images with text and some without... should I bother adding alt text to the rest of them?
Thanks
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[ImageIsland]

Yes, its generally a good idea to put relevant text in alt attributes for all images, as well as title attributes for links and object elements. For images that are not relevant, spacers, or small in size, you should go ahead and use empty alt tags, as well, as those are ignored. The reasons for using alts and titles is not crirtical to search results, as much as for other factors. These include the following:

1. People with accessibility issues (the blind) need to know what the images are, as they may use a different aural reader when viewing your site.
2. People who for whatever reason, do not support or display images in their user agent, will be able to know what the image was.
3. Google - Google has stated that your site should be readable by Linx browser. Lynx is a basic text reader and does not support image displays. However, it works much like a parser or engine in that it strips away images and objects and looks at the alt text and titles to get more information about the image in your site. This allows not only Lynx readers and user and alternative engines to read your site, but Google's search spiders to also indiex "extra" information about the site and its images.
4. There are more alternative browsers and WAP enabled services, like handhelds and PDA's that may not support images past a certain size, or at all. In those cases, they may honor the image text, which again, could be used to carry important marketing information about your site in thousands of handheld dives and viewers.
5. As the Web evolves, we will be moving away from the image tag and IE's support for alt. It will be replaced and is with title tags. It means that almost any tag will be able to contain imagery, which means, it will be doubly important to get in the habit of placing titles on tags.6. Google now indexes images in its image search feature. That means the name of the image and its alt or title text come ionto play, if someone happens to find your site that way.

Last item...as far as direct search results in standard SEO techniques, I dont think alt text makes much difference, other than whats listed above. But the fact that Google asks you check your site in Lynx in its documentation tells me they do parse all text and that does mean alt text.

Hope that helps! Maybe some other experts on WebPro can add to that.

Mitchell

[divicohen]

Thank you... you got me to notice that I totally forgot about alt for the links I only thought about the large images...
Thanks again!

[mannequin-lady]

Yes, its generally a good idea to put relevant text in alt attributes for all images, as well as title attributes for links and object elements. ... The reasons for using alts and titles is not crirtical to search results, as much as for other factors. These include the following:

Hi, Mitchell,

Thank you for this advice and for pointing out that alt text helps people with sight disabilities need this. I printed out what you wrote.

Steph

[intelinside]

In addition to the ALT tags, you can also use TITLE tags with your URL to further help your SEO cause.

[encikbeliau]

can we put keyword to the ALT tags ?

example , my blog entry is about auto parts , then i use ALT tags like this ' toyota camry 2009 auto parts '

[divicohen]

I think that YES, you can use your keywords... what "innominds" meant was don't spam it with 100 keywords as a alt text...

[azeemi]

ALt tag text or keywords in alt tag related to images are the best solution to increase your images search. Search engines and bot understand images with alt tag keywords.

[Janna122003]

Hello,
Should I input Alt text? would it help rankings? I have placed some images with text and some without... should I bother adding alt text to the rest of them?
Thanks

If your site has an image it would be better to put alt attribute on images. But make sure that the keywords is also related with the images.

[mayankxx]

Thankx dear ,
Last time I have no idea for this but I know that .
Thankx