ALT Atributes (ALT Tags)

Alt tags are technically "alt attributes." They are text that you put in the HTML code to describe the image you're using. So let's say you sell chicken suit costumes; you might have a picture of a guy dressed up as a giant chicken on your site, and you might want to add alt attribute text that said something like "chicken suit" or "guy in chicken suit." The idea is that you would describe the image for people who have images turned off.  This was more important in the old days when people had slower connections, but it's coming back in vogue for people who browse the web on their BlackBerrys and other PDAs.  (As an aside, someone recently told me they love my newsletter being all text because it's the only one they can easily read on their BlackBerry!).  With images off, browsers will show the alt attribute text visibly on the page.  And for those who are visually impaired and are using a voice screen reader, the alt attribute text is read out loud so the person would know what the picture was about.

That's basically what you need to know as far as the alt attribute is concerned in regards to your non-clickable images on a page.  For a clickable image, especially one that is part of your main navigation which actually has words as part of the graphic, the story is a little bit different.  Clickable images are more of a possible SEO concern, because they are often used as opposed to plain old text links.  You may have heard about using keyword-rich anchor text (the clickable part of the link) as a way of telling the search engines what the page you're clicking to is all about. Well, the alt attribute text works in a similar fashion.

Technically, if you had an image "button" on your site that said "Products," for instance, you'd usually want some alt attribute text that simply said "Products" in it to match the words of the graphic.  But here's where it gets tricky.  For SEO purposes, if we're not using a text link where we can put keyword-rich anchor text, we can use alt attribute text instead.  It seems to provide a similar benefit to a text link, meaning if possible, we'd like to describe what the person will be clicking to if they click that image, and we'd like to describe it as descriptively as possible, i.e., using a keyword phrase.  The problem is that there's a fine line between doing anything sneaky or deceptive in your alt attributes (because they're not all that visible to most people) and doing the right thing for those that do see them. 

In my opinion, as long as you're still describing what the person will be clicking to, it's okay if the alt attribute doesn't say exactly the same thing as the graphic navigation button says. So for the products button above, I'd probably want to put something like "Chicken Suits" in the alt attribute (or whatever the main keyword phrase that actually described that product page). In my earlier SEO days, I would just stick anything in there even if it really didn't make sense if I thought it would be good for rankings, but I've learned to be more careful and consider the users much more as I've matured as an SEO.  I strongly believe you shouldn't stuff alt
attributes with just anything because you think it might help rankings. 

The good news is that I've found that no one thing like alt attribute text is going to make or break your optimization efforts, so it's important to think of the users first and to make sense for them.  

Jill

Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and host of the free weekly High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter.

She specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations and seminars. Jill's handbook, "The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" teaches business owners how and where to place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search engines.

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