Ranking Images and Using Alt Tags
Images and Alt Tags A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s obvious that you’ll be adding images to your website’s pages, and doing so will increase the relevance of the content to the user, enhance the user’s experience and may potentially lead to greater traffic for your site. Now that the major engines feature “image search” functions, you can get your images “ranked” and this will help drive traffic to your site. Ranking your images depends on many factors, but the key one is to make sure you write the alt tag correctly. The alt tag’s job is to explain what the image is showing users. Spiders cannot “see” the image like you and I, so this tidbit of information is vital for them to understand the “content” of the image. So, if you have a page about “red delicious apples” and there is a picture of a red delicious apple there, your alt tag information would read like this: Red Delicious Apple hanging from a branch It’s important to vary the alt tag information from image to image, and more important that you be as accurate as possible in describing the image. The balancing act is between accurately describing the image and integrating keywords from your research. Get this balance right and watch your images rank well over time and drive users to your website.
