One simple technique can improve your
search engine rank, make site navigation
easier, and increase the accessibility of
your site to disabled visitors. Yet, as
many as 78% of sites don't use it! Boost
your site's profile with human visitors and
search engine spiders with the ALT tag.
Inserting ALT Text
Adding ALT descriptions to your IMG tags is
quick and easy. You don't have to do any
complex HTML coding. If you can describe
your image or link, then you can add ALT
tags to your code.
We've used some examples from the National
Zoo's Web site:
<img src="thumbnails/fneg2000-12441a.jpg"
width="100" height="78" ALT="The National
Zoo's new Panda Habitat, where giant panda
Mai Xiang enjoyed her first meal">
|
You can also include an ALT tag when your
image is a link:
<a href="http://pandas.si.edu/gallery/
airportzoo/pages/fneg2000-12441a.htm">
<img src="thumbnails/fneg2000-12441a.jpg"
width="100" height="78" ALT="See the National
Zoo's new Panda Habitat, where giant panda
Mai Xiang enjoyed her first meal"></a>
|
Ideally, your ALT text descriptions should
be complete sentences, rather than a list
of keywords or obscure phrase like
"company logo small 2." Remember
that all visitors are likely to see (or
hear) some version of your ALT text so be
sure that it's meaningful.
Optimize ALT For Search Engines
Besides helping human visitors, ALT
descriptions help you rank higher in some
search engines. AltaVista and Google are
two of the search engines that use ALT
descriptive text when they rank Web sites.
The growth of search
engine/directory partnerships means
that a high rank in one engine can often
translate into an improved rank on its
partner sites.
Search engine algorithms calculate the
number of times keywords are repeated and
give higher rank to pages that use them
often. Keywords in the ALT descriptive
text help you increase their frequency on
the page. Search engines assume the terms
are more relevant and important if they're
used in the page content, not just listed
in the META tag.
For instance, the descriptive text in the
National Zoo example code uses keywords and
keyword phrases from the META keyword tag:
National Zoo, panda, Mai Xiang, and giant
panda. Since these are relevant to the
site's content, they're easy to include as
descriptive text.
If you're having problems choosing
relevant, targeted keywords, refer to this
article, How
To Pick Your Keywords. It provides
helpful tips about selecting keywords and
using them to improve your search engine
ranking.
Make Your Web Site Sticky
ALT tags help you promote your site in
another way too: they help make it
"sticky." Sticky means that
visitors stay at your site longer so they
see your content and purchase your
products. Visitors who feel comfortable at
a site will stay longer - and hopefully
return often.
Disabled visitors who use text-only or
spoken word browsers rely on the ALT text
for clues about the image's content and
function. This can be a lucrative
audience: they represent a worldwide
audience of 750 million and spend twice as
much time online as the average user. But
it isn't just a disability issue: ALT tags
make your site more accessible
to everyone.
Visitors see your ALT text while the images
are downloading or when they mouse over
images. The descriptive text helps them
decide if they want to wait for an image to
download or move on to a different page.
If your image is also a link, then visitors
can read the explanatory text and quickly
jump to the section they want.
Site navigation is easier, so impatient
visitors are less likely to leave
the site.
Don't Follow The Crowd
Online retailers devote a lot of time and
expense to developing their sites.
Surprisingly, most ignore a technique that
makes it easier for customers to find and
navigate through their sites!
The April 2001 Web Usability
Index survey found that the majority of
sites surveyed in 4 major categories had
missing ALT tags.
| Category |
% With
Missing
ALT Tags |
| Ecommerce |
78% |
| Portals |
76% |
| Corporate |
61% |
| Identity |
57% |
|
ALT tags are a small addition to
your HTML code that can make a big
impact on your site. Since many of
your competitors don't use them,
give your site and edge and include
them on all images.
