ALT Tag Importance

ALT Tag Importance

Alternate Tags, popularly known as ALT Tags are another important Seo factor which contributes to the SEO of a web page. They are also known as Image Titles as they are used to label images like jpg, jpeg and gif on a web page so that the search engines can know what the image is about. On a webpage, they are displayed as a small yellow box which comes up with a description of the image when you roll over your cursor on an image. In some browsers, the ALT Tag may be displayed with a white background instead of yellow.

Since Search Engine Spiders cannot read images, the use of ALT Tags on an image can help to describe the image to the Search Engines. Text on a webpage is easily read by the Search Engines, but if a page has little text and more images being used on it, then ALT Tags can be helpful. Even if your web page has no content at all and uses an image only, the page can still rank high on the SERPs by the use of an ALT Tag with the image. However there is some debate on the use of ALT Tags, as to whether they help in Image Search only, or are also useful for SEO as well? This is discussed in more detail later on.

Tips on using ALT Tags

Here are a few Seo Factor which you should consider when using ALT Tags with images on your web pages:

• Use ALT Tags to label images being used on your webpage
  

• Use only the most relevant keywords in the ALT Tag to label the image
  

• Do not stuff unrelated keywords in the ALT Tags
  

• Try and follow a character limit for the ALT Tags. A very lengthy Alternate Text can be considered as keyword stuffing by the Search Engines
  

• Use ALT Tags with all images on a web page
  

• For more important images, use keywords or phrases as the ALT Text
  

• For other images on the page like background images, table borders, spacers, dividing lines and other images used as design elements use alt=”" as the Alternate Text
  

• Use related keywords or key phrases with important images on a page
  

• Do not repeat keywords in ALT Tags
  

• ALT Text should be a sentence or phrase, instead of keywords separated by commas
  

How important are ALT Tags?

Some SEO experts debate on the use of ALT Tags for SEO purposes. Some are of the opinion that they are no longer considered for SEO by the Search Engines, and are used only for Image Searches, like Google Images. Others feel that they may be given importance by some search engines, while other search engines may ignore them. Still, a few others feel that the ALT Tags get indexed and websites can achieve rankings in SERPs due to their use.

Out of the important Seo Factor, Google gives importance to ALT Tags when indexing a web page. Other search engines provide queries to check for ALT Tags being used on a web page. ALT Tags can hence be not only useful for the Search Engines, but they also provide relevance to the users browsing a web page.

Although the overall weight of ALT Tags for Search Engine Optimization is low, it is still a good idea to use ALT Tags on your web pages with the images. As long as they are not keywords stuffed, they will provide some benefit to both the users as well as the search engines and will not hurt you.

Alt tags are text descriptions on web images. These descriptions show up if an image will not display and are accessible to text readers used by visually impaired visitors.

Have you ever noticed a little description pop up when you place your mouse over an image. This may be an Alt tag or a title tag. In Internet explorer will display an ALT tag as a tool tip*. Some browsers like Firefox do not display ALT tags in this way but they are still there hidden and serving a purpose.