Comments on: A picture is worth a thousand words, but that’s not always enough

By: Real Estate Developer

Real Estate Developer — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:44:16 +0000

Great post thanks for sharing. Even the comments are worth a read.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:28:34 +0000

I always urge people to use as little image based text as possible for the web. It's not just the SEO that is important - it's also accessibility. If the text is in image format, then it's harder for people to make it bigger/smaller in their browser, and seemingly impossible to have it read out aloud someone with impaired vision etc.

By: William

William — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:04:11 +0000

Hi, Very helpfull article. And I have to say you are a great writer. Straight to the point... Have a great day, William

By: Heidi Cool

Heidi Cool — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:52:30 +0000

Interactive Marketing brings up an interesting issue. One shouldn't use the alt attribute specifically for SEO, however search engines don't ignore it entirely. In How Important is ALT Text In Search Engine Optimization? Robin Nobles clarifies some of the issues, explaining that the words in the alt tag aren't used by the search engines to evaluate the relevancy of the page. That's O.K. It just means you shouldn't be stuffing your alt attribute with keywords, you should be filling it with short meaningful text describing the image. That information is used by search engines that index photos. The alt text, captions and text placed near an image are used to help determine what an image is. Additional information about that can be found in Google Webmaster help. Properly worded text in the alt attribute and adjoining areas will boost your image search rankings, which in turn can drive more traffic to your pages.

By: Interactive Marketing

Interactive Marketing — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:17:05 +0000

Simple but very very useful information for those of you just starting out. However it is important to note that most search engine spiders ignore the alt image text unless the image is itself a link. best to simply link the image to the homepage or even directly back to the page it is on, either way will work.

By: Marc Klein

Marc Klein — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:58:19 +0000

Wow, really great post. And so easy to understand. Thanks.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 08:46:45 +0000

Ya it's always a good Idea to use alt tags. I think it's also a good Idea to write a little something about your image either above or below your image.

By: Heidi Cool

Heidi Cool — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:59:39 +0000

Tom, That's a great point. I was emphasizing alt tags, etc. for accessibility reasons, but you are so right, this is additional info for the search engines as well. If your alt tag contains meaningful information it can also help your SEO. This article, Alt Attributes and SEO, offers some good insight into this.

By: TomG

TomG — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:41:44 +0000

Your right, a picture says a 1000 words to a human but almost nothing to a search engine. Making sure you name the image file with an appropriate keyword and a good description in the alt text will increase your page presents in text search and even produce images search results.