Hello there... hope can you help me on this?probably is an old issue but still not clear to me.
I got this message from a toll I use for optimize a page doing SEO
Your keyword frequency in ALT image attributes is too high! Your keyword shouldn't appear more than 3 times in ALTs on your page while it appears 8 times. Remove redundant occurrences of your keyword for ALTs with your favorite HTML editor. Make sure to avoide immediate keyword repetitions in ALT image attributes as this may be considered spam.
The message is quite clear?but not sure if is true not how to solve my trouble.
My situation is the following one:
(1) For me is quite important the use of ALT because in those pages I have few or no text at all as the content is the images themselves?
(2) Normally I have a page with 20 (or more) thumbnails and so 20 (or more) alt tags all linked to 20 (or more) bigger images...
(3) Suppose that all the images of my album are related to 'Rome' ... in all the alt tag there will be/should be something like ''photo of... in 'Rome' " ???
(4) Final results.... 20 alt tag and 20 times Rome as keyword.
QUESTIONS
Many people suggest correctly to insert in the alt tag the description of the image... and in the description should be useful to insert the keyword you want to achieve position for.... what and where is the limit? Can arm my website?
Actually the error I got from the toll make sense... but what is the best alternative?
In case of a page with an album of 20 (or more) images or more on it what is the best way?
Just use the main keyword in the first 3 alt tag of images? then skip for the rest of them? What else?
At the present time I noted no problems at all with yahoo but in Google the position is far far away.....
Hope to see good reply and solution ?br />
Regards and thank you in advance. First of all, I would say add appropriate textual content to your pages that contain only images. Search engines love pages with rich content, that is both text and appropriate graphics/images inter-twined. Second of all, I wouldnt worry about 8 occurrences of the same keywords in the ALT tags of images on the same page, this is because the ALT text is not considered keyword spamming, it is not visible to the website visitors so it is not just the same as keyword spamming which will be quite obvious. It is best to describe each and every image with the appropriate ALT and TITLE tags so google image search can index the images properly with semantic data. Since you have less than 10 images on the same page, it is nothing if they use the same ALT/TITLE tags with the same keywords. Quote: Originally Posted by Traffic-Bug this is because the ALT text is not considered keyword spamming, it is not visible to the website visitors so it is not just the same as keyword spamming which will be quite obvious. Should I take it that you're unfamiliar with text browsers such as Lynx or W3M? The W3C recommends that alt text specify alternative text for user-agents that cannot display images, forms or applets.
Here's a couple of videos that may be of some help to you ArtphotoasiA:
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
Is there a way for you to add a small amount of text as a description below your images to increase the spiderable content? I think it's a part of keyword stuffing. Try to minimize the number of your keyword in your ALT tags and in your body post. When it comes to SEO, you need to use tag keywords naturally. The Matt Cutts' video is very informative. The goal of your alt tag is to provide more info about the images and the page content. That doesn't mean you can't add some important keywords in them. For each alt tag, you should read it to yourself and see if it sounds spammy to you if this tag is written by someone else. I have seen a lot of people devalue alt tags, but I have seen some well-optimized sites used good alt tags. I can't tell for sure if the alt tags play a huge role in the overall SEO, but I don't think it would hurt to get it done right. Quote: Originally Posted by gobeyond I can't tell for sure if the alt tags play a huge role in the overall SEO, but I don't think it would hurt to get it done right. Alt text was use when the image was hyperlinked in the past; I haven't tested this recently though. Maybe someone can weigh in on this and confirm/deny? Quote: Originally Posted by ~CReed Should I take it that you're unfamiliar with text browsers such as Lynx or W3M? The W3C recommends that alt text specify alternative text for user-agents that cannot display images, forms or applets.
Here's a couple of videos that may be of some help to you ArtphotoasiA:
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
Is there a way for you to add a small amount of text as a description below your images to increase the spiderable content? well dear that is the nice post for the time period & also there is the vedio is accpet able for us I think you will be fine if you focus on using the ALT tags in they way they are intended - for users not for SEO.
Pretend you are describing the image to a blind person and put that in the ALT tag. That should be your alt tag because that is what alt tags are actually for. You shouldn't get penalized in any way for this. An accurate and descriptive title helps both people and search engines determine what a web page is about. Titles are important and very visible to users. Having a descriptive and accurate title allows people to choose your page above others in a list of search engine results. Quote: Originally Posted by ~CReed Alt text was use when the image was hyperlinked in the past; I haven't tested this recently though. Maybe someone can weigh in on this and confirm/deny? Up until now, correct me if I am wrong, I have not heard of any improvement from these gigantic search engines about having to correctly recognize an image without the aid of Alt tags. That said, I should say bots still depend on it to recognize images. Thus, using images instead of anchor texts to link to sites would not help your rankings unless you've specified an descriptive Alt text (the rightful description and at the same time a keyword).
As to the how to optimize alt tags may depend on the scenario the image has. But I'd say a paragraph description declared on Alt tag is very much awkward and is some sort of malicious to concern parties. I'd rather stick to a sentence long description packed with rightful descriptive keywords than to appear unprofessional with lengthy ones. Quote: Originally Posted by heartofluck An accurate and descriptive title helps both people and search engines determine what a web page is about. Titles are important and very visible to users. Having a descriptive and accurate title allows people to choose your page above others in a list of search engine results. Heartofluck you said the good reply for this thread.
"Accurate and descriptive title helps both people and search engines determine what a web page is about" Really interesting post...great piece of information!!! I think..it is happening because of keyword repetition..try to use different keywords... Great comments.... thank you.........
meanwhile I searched around....here we have the definitive (i guess) answer... from google webmaster tool itself....
The alt attribute is used to describe the contents of an image file. It's important for several reasons:
* It provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of the image. We use this information to help determine the best image to return for a user's query.
* Many people-for example, users with visual impairments, or people using screen readers or who have low-bandwidth connections-may not be able to see images on web pages. Descriptive alt text provides these users with important information.
Not so good:
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt=""/>
Better:
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt="puppy"/>
Best:
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt="Dalmatian puppy playing fetch">
To be avoided
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt="puppy dog baby
dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever
labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier
puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food"/> better still I believe would be something like this
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"dalmation-puppy.jpg" alt="dalmatian puppy playing fetch">
or even
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"dalmation-puppy-playing.jpg" alt="zach's dalmatian puppy playing fetch">
depending on your niche and also how other people are naming and labeling their photos a longer more descriptive title is better and then the good descriptive Alt text as well
you asked specifically about rome, and there are tens of millions of photos so perhaps a bit of research and more descriptive
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"rome-italy-colosseum.jpg" alt="the roman colosseum at night">
and you will see too there are different search ways to spell that word colosseum such as 'coliseum'
or you could use this: ancient-rome-colosseum.jpg etc, etc
do searches and see how others label their photos from rome
piazza-del-popolo-church-rome.jpg and an Alt text etc Do you really think that filename also is important?
If there is ALT this is what google consider... if not ALT available ok then filename will be considered. Quote: Originally Posted by ArtphotoasiA Do you really think that filename also is important?
If there is ALT this is what google consider... if not ALT available ok then filename will be considered. yes i would imagine google take the filename into consideration. i often don't use alt tags as it wouldn't be needed and if images can't be seen i don't want anything displayed as it would look silly imo to have some text in a box saying something like "us working at a dirty house" as the users may not understand why that text is there. Quote: Originally Posted by imadam yes i would imagine google take the filename into consideration. i often don't use alt tags as it wouldn't be needed and if images can't be seen i don't want anything displayed as it would look silly imo to have some text in a box saying something like "us working at a dirty house" as the users may not understand why that text is there. Sorry to disagree, just look the video posted above... ALT is the most important thing to Google... then maybe can help also the file images name... but not so much.... personally I get mad if i change the name on the file that my camera does because it makes my archive much more complex and hard to manage.
Also W3C clearly stated that ALT attribute is a MUST have for every image... better use '' '' empy if t he image is not important but you must use to validate a website. it is happening because your keyword repetition.try to use different or a unique keywords.. W3C specific rules
* if the image is simply decorated text , put the text in the alt attribute
* if the image is used to create bullets in a list, a horizontal line, or other similar decoration, it is fine to have an empty alt attribute (e.g., alt=""), but it is better to use things like list-style-image in CSS
* if the image presents a lot of important information, try to summarize it in a short line for the alt attribute and add a longdesc link to a more detailed description
I got this message from a toll I use for optimize a page doing SEO
Your keyword frequency in ALT image attributes is too high! Your keyword shouldn't appear more than 3 times in ALTs on your page while it appears 8 times. Remove redundant occurrences of your keyword for ALTs with your favorite HTML editor. Make sure to avoide immediate keyword repetitions in ALT image attributes as this may be considered spam.
The message is quite clear?but not sure if is true not how to solve my trouble.
My situation is the following one:
(1) For me is quite important the use of ALT because in those pages I have few or no text at all as the content is the images themselves?
(2) Normally I have a page with 20 (or more) thumbnails and so 20 (or more) alt tags all linked to 20 (or more) bigger images...
(3) Suppose that all the images of my album are related to 'Rome' ... in all the alt tag there will be/should be something like ''photo of... in 'Rome' " ???
(4) Final results.... 20 alt tag and 20 times Rome as keyword.
QUESTIONS
Many people suggest correctly to insert in the alt tag the description of the image... and in the description should be useful to insert the keyword you want to achieve position for.... what and where is the limit? Can arm my website?
Actually the error I got from the toll make sense... but what is the best alternative?
In case of a page with an album of 20 (or more) images or more on it what is the best way?
Just use the main keyword in the first 3 alt tag of images? then skip for the rest of them? What else?
At the present time I noted no problems at all with yahoo but in Google the position is far far away.....
Hope to see good reply and solution ?br />
Regards and thank you in advance. First of all, I would say add appropriate textual content to your pages that contain only images. Search engines love pages with rich content, that is both text and appropriate graphics/images inter-twined. Second of all, I wouldnt worry about 8 occurrences of the same keywords in the ALT tags of images on the same page, this is because the ALT text is not considered keyword spamming, it is not visible to the website visitors so it is not just the same as keyword spamming which will be quite obvious. It is best to describe each and every image with the appropriate ALT and TITLE tags so google image search can index the images properly with semantic data. Since you have less than 10 images on the same page, it is nothing if they use the same ALT/TITLE tags with the same keywords. Quote: Originally Posted by Traffic-Bug this is because the ALT text is not considered keyword spamming, it is not visible to the website visitors so it is not just the same as keyword spamming which will be quite obvious. Should I take it that you're unfamiliar with text browsers such as Lynx or W3M? The W3C recommends that alt text specify alternative text for user-agents that cannot display images, forms or applets.
Here's a couple of videos that may be of some help to you ArtphotoasiA:
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
Is there a way for you to add a small amount of text as a description below your images to increase the spiderable content? I think it's a part of keyword stuffing. Try to minimize the number of your keyword in your ALT tags and in your body post. When it comes to SEO, you need to use tag keywords naturally. The Matt Cutts' video is very informative. The goal of your alt tag is to provide more info about the images and the page content. That doesn't mean you can't add some important keywords in them. For each alt tag, you should read it to yourself and see if it sounds spammy to you if this tag is written by someone else. I have seen a lot of people devalue alt tags, but I have seen some well-optimized sites used good alt tags. I can't tell for sure if the alt tags play a huge role in the overall SEO, but I don't think it would hurt to get it done right. Quote: Originally Posted by gobeyond I can't tell for sure if the alt tags play a huge role in the overall SEO, but I don't think it would hurt to get it done right. Alt text was use when the image was hyperlinked in the past; I haven't tested this recently though. Maybe someone can weigh in on this and confirm/deny? Quote: Originally Posted by ~CReed Should I take it that you're unfamiliar with text browsers such as Lynx or W3M? The W3C recommends that alt text specify alternative text for user-agents that cannot display images, forms or applets.
Here's a couple of videos that may be of some help to you ArtphotoasiA:
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
+ YouTube Video ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you dont have Flash installed.
Is there a way for you to add a small amount of text as a description below your images to increase the spiderable content? well dear that is the nice post for the time period & also there is the vedio is accpet able for us I think you will be fine if you focus on using the ALT tags in they way they are intended - for users not for SEO.
Pretend you are describing the image to a blind person and put that in the ALT tag. That should be your alt tag because that is what alt tags are actually for. You shouldn't get penalized in any way for this. An accurate and descriptive title helps both people and search engines determine what a web page is about. Titles are important and very visible to users. Having a descriptive and accurate title allows people to choose your page above others in a list of search engine results. Quote: Originally Posted by ~CReed Alt text was use when the image was hyperlinked in the past; I haven't tested this recently though. Maybe someone can weigh in on this and confirm/deny? Up until now, correct me if I am wrong, I have not heard of any improvement from these gigantic search engines about having to correctly recognize an image without the aid of Alt tags. That said, I should say bots still depend on it to recognize images. Thus, using images instead of anchor texts to link to sites would not help your rankings unless you've specified an descriptive Alt text (the rightful description and at the same time a keyword).
As to the how to optimize alt tags may depend on the scenario the image has. But I'd say a paragraph description declared on Alt tag is very much awkward and is some sort of malicious to concern parties. I'd rather stick to a sentence long description packed with rightful descriptive keywords than to appear unprofessional with lengthy ones. Quote: Originally Posted by heartofluck An accurate and descriptive title helps both people and search engines determine what a web page is about. Titles are important and very visible to users. Having a descriptive and accurate title allows people to choose your page above others in a list of search engine results. Heartofluck you said the good reply for this thread.
"Accurate and descriptive title helps both people and search engines determine what a web page is about" Really interesting post...great piece of information!!! I think..it is happening because of keyword repetition..try to use different keywords... Great comments.... thank you.........
meanwhile I searched around....here we have the definitive (i guess) answer... from google webmaster tool itself....
The alt attribute is used to describe the contents of an image file. It's important for several reasons:
* It provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of the image. We use this information to help determine the best image to return for a user's query.
* Many people-for example, users with visual impairments, or people using screen readers or who have low-bandwidth connections-may not be able to see images on web pages. Descriptive alt text provides these users with important information.
Not so good:
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt=""/>
Better:
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt="puppy"/>
Best:
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt="Dalmatian puppy playing fetch">
To be avoided
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"puppy.jpg" alt="puppy dog baby
dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever
labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier
puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food"/> better still I believe would be something like this
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"dalmation-puppy.jpg" alt="dalmatian puppy playing fetch">
or even
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"dalmation-puppy-playing.jpg" alt="zach's dalmatian puppy playing fetch">
depending on your niche and also how other people are naming and labeling their photos a longer more descriptive title is better and then the good descriptive Alt text as well
you asked specifically about rome, and there are tens of millions of photos so perhaps a bit of research and more descriptive
<img src=http://www.v7n.com/forums/seo-forum/"rome-italy-colosseum.jpg" alt="the roman colosseum at night">
and you will see too there are different search ways to spell that word colosseum such as 'coliseum'
or you could use this: ancient-rome-colosseum.jpg etc, etc
do searches and see how others label their photos from rome
piazza-del-popolo-church-rome.jpg and an Alt text etc Do you really think that filename also is important?
If there is ALT this is what google consider... if not ALT available ok then filename will be considered. Quote: Originally Posted by ArtphotoasiA Do you really think that filename also is important?
If there is ALT this is what google consider... if not ALT available ok then filename will be considered. yes i would imagine google take the filename into consideration. i often don't use alt tags as it wouldn't be needed and if images can't be seen i don't want anything displayed as it would look silly imo to have some text in a box saying something like "us working at a dirty house" as the users may not understand why that text is there. Quote: Originally Posted by imadam yes i would imagine google take the filename into consideration. i often don't use alt tags as it wouldn't be needed and if images can't be seen i don't want anything displayed as it would look silly imo to have some text in a box saying something like "us working at a dirty house" as the users may not understand why that text is there. Sorry to disagree, just look the video posted above... ALT is the most important thing to Google... then maybe can help also the file images name... but not so much.... personally I get mad if i change the name on the file that my camera does because it makes my archive much more complex and hard to manage.
Also W3C clearly stated that ALT attribute is a MUST have for every image... better use '' '' empy if t he image is not important but you must use to validate a website. it is happening because your keyword repetition.try to use different or a unique keywords.. W3C specific rules
* if the image is simply decorated text , put the text in the alt attribute
* if the image is used to create bullets in a list, a horizontal line, or other similar decoration, it is fine to have an empty alt attribute (e.g., alt=""), but it is better to use things like list-style-image in CSS
* if the image presents a lot of important information, try to summarize it in a short line for the alt attribute and add a longdesc link to a more detailed description