Search Engine Optimization Features, Part II

Last week we talked about some of the essential meta tags to incorporate into your web sites source code, particularly for your home page. This week, we’re going to continue with search engine optimization tips with regard to coding.

Another important aspect of code that can help you in several ways is your ALT TAGS. Alt tags are the words or lines of text that appear when you move your mouse (”mouseover”) a graphic (photos, clip art, etc.). Since search engine spiders don’t recognize images, if the majority of your home page is made up of images, you’re not leaving it much to go on without alt tags.

An example of how to write an alt tag looks like this:

The first portion refers specifically to the image file and the second portion is the text that appears during the mouse over.

Alt tags ought and need to be used with all images. Remember, browsers allow Internet users to surf with their graphics feature turned off for faster loading, so if you do not have alt tags and no other distinguishing text, a visitor to your site under these conditions would see virtually nothing at all! Besides, alt tags allow you to more fully describe the image the visitor is seeing.

Weaving critical keywords into these alt tag descriptions can help improve your chances for a better search ranking. Search engine spiders can scan the text of the alt tag code, adding it to the ensemble of your other optimized site features.

Next week’s tip on search engine will talk about what you can do on the face of your web site to help improve its ranking.

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