Great Tip...

Fender963 · 10-16-2003, 08:32 PM

After having my website around for awhile, I have come to find one important thing when it comes to SEO.... using alt tags with images. This is especially important for those of you with graphic heavy sites.

Say you have a navigational header, made up of 6 different graphics. Each one says a different thing (home, contact etc...). Although a visitor will be able to read the text on the graphic, a seach engine spider will not. However alt tags, describing your images, will be readable by spiders.

At first I never used alt tags. After using them, I noticed a significant increase in traffic from search engines and an increase in my rank.

Kyle

John Scott · 10-16-2003, 11:40 PM

There is some debate about ALT text, but in many instances it can be proven to help.

PhilC · 10-17-2003, 04:04 AM

I always use alt text (and I often use title attributes). I've seen top 10 Google rankings that are there solely on account of alt text, but they were 100% graphics, so it's certain that Google swallows alt text.

My thinking is, don't leave out what you can put in.

Coffeee™ · 10-17-2003, 06:25 AM

Yea I agree there PhilC thats a change I am going to do

jvanv8 · 10-19-2003, 10:35 AM

Alt tags are required on all images for W3C validation.
If you don't have them, your site is not up to standards.

John

John Scott · 10-19-2003, 10:39 AM

Not being up to W3C - does it matter? Does a site need to validate to be successful? No. Google doesn't validate.

I think W3C standards are "nice", but practically worthless.

edbarton · 10-19-2003, 11:52 AM

Yeah they are pretty much worthless

Most major sites don't validate

eyelfixit · 10-19-2003, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

Not being up to W3C - does it matter? Does a site need to validate to be successful? No. Google doesn't validate.

I think W3C standards are "nice", but practically worthless.

I was told that I had 1400 erros on a page. When in all reality there wasn't. My coding was a little different but my pages were browser compatible and there were no errors in the browser.

I later found out that because I coded it to be browser compatible that's were my erros were coming from.

Talk about being counter productive. W3C SUCKS!

Suspicious · 10-19-2003, 03:34 PM

Yay, people agree with me ^^

Rick · 10-19-2003, 04:15 PM

I can't believe I'm reading these posts. You guys call yourselves "webmasters" - yet you completely disregard the standards for coding that have been put and place and embraced by OUR community. Talk about being counterproductive. If you continue to ignore these standards, your web sites will NOT be compatible with future internet browsers (including non-traditional internet devices). Marketing, SEO, keywords, etc won't mean a damn thing if your site isn't accessible because of poor coding. No, Google doesn't validate. But I assure you, they have the technical know-how to make it validate. Do you?

Quote:

Yeah they are pretty much worthless. Most major sites don't validate.

The reason most sites don't validate is because of this kind of mentality. Worthless? LOL. Well, considering ALL the major browser developers use these standards as the basis for how their browsers render pages... uh, they are pretty important. Sure, some of them still support legacy quirks. But I assure you, they won't continue doing this forever. To survive in this business, you MUST learn to adapt. It's the essence of what we do.

Quote:

I was told that I had 1400 erros on a page. When in all reality there wasn't. My coding was a little different but my pages were browser compatible and there were no errors in the browser.

If you're getting 1400 validation errors, you need to go back to the basics and learn how to write code. Folks, it's NOT that hard to make your site validate. Stop coding for ancient browsers! According to global stats, only 1% of people are still using Netscape 4.x. Trust me, this 1% does not care about how pretty sites look, or they would have upgraded long ago! If you code based on standards, compatibility will come naturally.

John Scott · 10-19-2003, 04:22 PM

No. Standards do not dictate standards. Browsers dictate standards. Why do you think Google doesn't care about validating? Validating means nothing.

Thanol · 10-19-2003, 04:27 PM

Quote:

completely disregard the standards for coding... that have been... embraced by OUR community.

If so many of us don't bother to make our sites vaildate how are the web standards embraced by us?

Quote:

Sure, some of them still support legacy quirks. But I assure you, they won't continue doing this forever.

The web browsers will continue to support the little quirks if people keep using them. No one wants to use a broswer that renders a large portion of websites so that they appear warped.

Rick · 10-19-2003, 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnScott

No. Standards do not dictate standards. Browsers dictate standards.

Actually, the standards dictate the browsers. All browser developers are using W3C standards as the foundation for their browsers. You'll notice that the latest verisons of Netscape, IE, and Mozilla are render VERY similarly. It's because they are all using the exact same W3C standards for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, etc.

John, I agree with you that standards right now aren't much vital to SEO and marketing issues. I'm just trying to communicate that complying to these standards will become more and more important, and people need to realize that. We can't completely disregard them and expect to be taken seriously as web developers.

John Scott · 10-19-2003, 04:36 PM

Rick,

I understand your point, and it is a valid one. But, for me, at this time, validating doesn't mean much. It means adding a lot of extra code which wastes bandwidth and slows page loads.

In the future, I do hope we can move toward a more uniform standard. I'll most likely move toward code which validates.

But that is then, and this is now.

Rick · 10-19-2003, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thanol

If so many of us don't bother to make our sites vaildate how are the web standards embraced by us?

By our community, I meant the community of web developers and coders. Trust me, web standards will someday soon make our lives much, MUCH easier.

Quote:

The web browsers will continue to support the little quirks if people keep using them. No one wants to use a broswer that renders a large portion of websites so that they appear warped.

Why code for quirks when you can do it the right way? Seems kind of illogical.

Thanol · 10-19-2003, 04:42 PM

Sometimes people don't know how to do it the right way. I mean seriously to get a nice looking web page to vaildate you need to know CSS pretty well. Most webmasters don't even know a single line of CSS let alone how to intergrate it into their webpage.

PhilC · 10-19-2003, 04:48 PM

I'm the moderator here, and I'm very important, so I'm gonna lock this thread 'cos I just don't like it!

It's a joke that only John will understand

John Scott · 10-19-2003, 04:51 PM

LOL! I must say, that's pretty much what happened there. Just proves that this forum is the best forum on the Internet. We close like one thread a year?

PhilC · 10-19-2003, 04:56 PM

It hasn't been going a year

John Scott · 10-19-2003, 05:14 PM

True. Let's say, we close one thread per month.