The alt tags are used by search engines for images. How else do you think
Google Image Search finds them? The alt tag helps people who cannot see and
it tellss the search engine what the picture depicts. The computerized
'spider' that search engines use cannot see a image, all it sees is code
telling that an image is there, what its filename is and how big it is.
Nothing more. The alt tag lets the search spider 'see' the photo.
See here, a tutorial from Google on SEO for image search:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=114016
"The alt attribute is used to describe the contents of an image file. It's
important for several reasons:
It provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of the
image. We use this information to help determine the best image to return
for a user's query."
--
Chris Crawford
Fine Art Photography
Fort Wayne, Indiana
260-747-5101
http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com My portfolio
http://blog.chriscrawfordphoto.com My latest work!
On 6/5/09 11:49 AM, "Chris Barker" <ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As far as I know, Chris, alt tags are there for the accessibility of
> images. I suppose the search engines might look at them but no one
> has ever advised me to put alt tags for SEO. Rather they are there
> for when an image is slow in loading or for people who cannot see the
> page and have to rely on the alt tag for the description.
>
> But I might be wrong ... I suppose :-)
>
> Chris
>
> On 5 Jun 2009, at 10:58, Chris Crawford wrote:
>
>> Brian,
>>
>> Make sure also that every image has an alt tag. This is a written
>> description (not a list of keywords!) of what the photo depicts. My
>> website
>> has a story under each photo, but got few people asking to purchase
>> things
>> the first 5 yrs I had the site. Three yrs ago I spent months adding
>> alt tags
>> to all of the 800 photos the site had at the time, and when I add
>> something
>> new I put in alt tags on the new stuff. Sales skyrocketed. Last year I
>> earned half of my income from sales off my site. Admittedly, my
>> income is
>> still very low, but things are getting better every year on my website
>> sales. Make sure also that each page has a title that describes in a
>> few
>> words what the page shows. Page titles and alt tags are more
>> important than
>> text on the page for search engines to find images.
--
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