Alt. Tags

[TP_Marketing]

How many alt tags should you aim for per page, or Images? Anytime I complete a page I run it through SEOmoZ Page analysis, and usually shoot for an "A", I also look at our competitors to see how many alt tags they are using, and they always have 2-3 per page with keyword inserted.

For example If I was aiming for EX. NFL tickets how could I incorp. this into more than 1 image having the keywords on the page without stuffing.

Our editor give us the option to put Image Description & Title.

Thx

[PH292]

In my view you should do what is natural and relevant to your content for both Google and your visitor - because you must not forget your visitor experience.

Identify your primary keywords / phrase and supporting secondary ones.

It is important that your picture file name uses keywords, ideally with two hyphens (ie: three words), all lower case.

The alt tag can ideally be up to seven words, again all lower case - and must make sense.

If you have a lot of text on the page then the use of your keywords would not be too concentrated so you could use the same file name a couple of times with a numeral to differentiate between the two.  That is not unreasonable when filing pictures. eg: xxx-xxx-xxx2.jpg  The secret is to be natural.

It is ok to look at your competitors, but remember their use may not be right.

If you wanted to use a number of pictures because they were interesting and relevant and did not actually need to have so much text, then I would suggest putting your relevant text at the top of the page, then your pictures, and then add additional optimised text at the bottom of the page.

I appreciate that this does not exactly answer your question about "How many", but that is difficult to answer in isolation - but I hope my answer underlines the importance of being "natural" and focussing on your visitor experience as well as Google et al.

I would also be interested to hear any one elses view.

All the best

PH

[TP_Marketing]

Should I also Include a Title? Im looking at our main competitor and they do not uses titles. Ive included them on our images, when you hover over an Image the title pops up. Im not sure if it is important for seo, or if its just a distraction for a visitor.

Thanks so much for the great info!!!!

[TP_Marketing]

Sorry I forgot to ask if there should be hyphens on the alt tags when i enter them via our WYSIWYG editor? And what format would you consider best for load times? Most of the images I've been inserting are small .jpg. 75x75 and roughly 250x350.jpg 2 imgaes per pages with approx 400-500 words in the body.

[SEOMeetups]

I don't think there is any magic number of keywords ie 7...., your ALT tags should be descriptive enough so that anyone with a screen reader can understand what the image is about.  There is no rules about ensuring all your keywords are lower case in your ATL tags but your file names should all try and remain lowercase if possible within your CMS for consistency.

You also don't want to include hyphens between your ATL tag keywords unless they are dynamically generated by your CMS and you have no control.

It may not be prefect SEO tactics but I always ensure my ALT tags and description can be interchanged and remain consistent.

Sure you can find several websites who over optimise and stuff keywords into the ALT tags but in my experience keeping it short to 1-3 keywords has the best chance of showing up in Google.

The title issue can have your designers wanting to stab your eyes out, I've had fights with design agencies in the past because I implemented "title" tags, it's really down to preference but you can use both I would just suggest making them consistent.