Tweet

How To Use Alt Tags and Titles To Get Your Web Site Indexed On Search Engines

Guest post by: Bruce Wood

Article Overview: Understanding how alt tags and titles help your site get indexed by search engines can boost your site’s visibility. This simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technique can be used without redesigning your site or adding new pages to it.

How To Use Alt Tags and Titles To Get Your Web Site Indexed On Search Engines

Even the best web sites are useless if no one can find them! Here's a professional tip on how to set up your site to be search-engine friendly. To understand what a search engine "spider" sees when it crawls across your site, you have to keep in mind that the spider only understands text. . This means that if your site is heavy on pictures and short on written words, the spider won't really understand what your site is all about. It needs clues, and those clues need to be written out as clearly as possible.

How do you do that without adding paragraphs of text and revising your great layout? It's not as difficult as it seems, but does take a bit of planning and logical thinking.

The first tip is to take advantage of ALL of the opportunities on your page to add titles and "alt" tags. These tags are invisible to site visitors, but the spiders love them. If you are designing your own pages, then you already have seen where these tags and titles go, but maybe you have ignored them. BIG mistake! Use every one, and fill them with relevant words (keywords) that you want your site to rank for in the search engines.

If you use a web designer, then provide the designer with one title and one alt tag description for each photograph on the page. This includes the header image, and any custom button images on the page. Oh yes-- and don't forget a descriptive title for the page itself!

What kind of descriptions? Here's an example, using an art gallery site's "exhibitions" page:

The page title could be "Monthly fine art exhibitions at the Famous Art Gallery";

The header image title could be "Famous Art Gallery in Bigtown USA Presents Modern And Traditional Fine Art" and have an alt tag description of "Fine Art Exhibitions By International Artists at the Famous Art Gallery";

The photo of a painting could be titled "Blue and Gold Sofa-Size Fine Art Painting By Award Winning Artist" and have an alt tag description "Award winning sofa-size art";

A navigation button labeled "Artists" could have a title "Contemporary artists showing at the Famous Art Gallery" and an alt description of "Modern and Traditional Fine Artists Showing in Bigtown USA."

Use all of the alt tags and titles available on your page. Any text, photo or button which is linked to another URL will also give you the opportunity to add a descriptive phrase to the link.

So, do you get the idea of how easily you can let the spiders know what your site is all about, without redoing everything on the pages and writing copious paragraphs? Use as many descriptive keywords and phrases as possible to get the point across.

Remember- photo tags and titles are invisible to site visitors, but the titles may appear if their cursor rests on an image. So use the descriptions that make sense when a viewer sees them pop up. It will add a professional flair to your site, and add value to the users' experience.

Related Articles
  Search Engine Optimization SEO Tip of the day: Using Styling Tags
  Meta Tags and SEO
  SEO Optimization
  Search Engine Friendly Pages
  Top 5 White Hat Techniques in SEO
  Importance of headings
  Business Blog Step 7: On Page SEO
  How to Optimize Google Images And Increase Your Website Traffic
  Get On The Gravy Train With A Good Internet Marketing Strategy!
  How Title and Meta Tags are Used for Search Engine Optimization
  SEO Basic understanding
  SEO Glossary [I-O]
  ••••••>Creative Titles Creation for Great SEO
  Why Are Keywords Important?
  Create a Sitemap to Get your Site Indexed
  The Proper Use of H1 Tags
  SEO - Using Meta Tags
  Crucial Element of Any Web Site Is ONE Thing
  Do-It-YourSelf SEO Part 1
  Meta Tags for SEO Purposes

Article Tags: alt tags, google, search engine visibility, SEO tips, tips, web site design, what are alt tags



Related Forum Posts
Re: How can I promote my site? - There are various useful techniques for promoting a website. In SEO the techniques could be "white hat" and "black hat" techniques. White hat techniques includes following techniques to promote website as per the search engine rules. - Search Engine Friendly Tags - Website submission to Search Engines - Website Submission to Social Sites (Like twitter, Facebook) - Articles Promotion & Press Release Promotion - Quality Directories promotion - Contribution to Blogs, Forums Black hat techniques can reduce website strength in the search engine and can treat site as spam that could be following. - Keywords Stuffing. - Hidden Links - Maximum Links of unknown sites.
Re: SES Toronto Next Week - In that case, how about the following? Track: Get Me Up to Speed * State of Search Marketing in Canada Track: Practical & Actionable * Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions Track: Advanced * User Search Behavior * Social Media Success * Web 2.0 & Search Engines * Giving Credit Where It’s Due: Which Campaign Sold What?
Amazed! - Hi Takuya, Your info is phantastic. Would it be possible to have some sort of directory to find this info at a later date? Can one find it in the 'Search' section? If I understand it right, it covers only the Subject Titles. Is that correct? I started writing this post before checking the 'Search' and all its possibilities. Kindest Regards Beat "Unlock People's Potentials!"
Re: SEO Recommendation Needed - One who gives guarantee of top position in Search Engines surely does not know much about SEO
Re: SEO... - 1: Find the Best Keywords 2: Discover Your Competitors 3: Optimize Your Title 4: Optimize Your META Tags 5: Use Headings 6: Use Title and ALT Attributes 7: Nomenclatures 8: Create a Site Map Page 9: Include a robots.txt File 10: Install a sitemap.xml for Google MySQL/Oracle:


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

ROSI Return on SUNK Investment

Ask All to Buy!

Why Your Own Internet Marketing Website Is A Must

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.