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Tips for Preparing Your Web Pages for Indexing:
<IMG alt="..."> Tags
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Alma Mater Software, Inc.
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Contents
Importance of <IMG alt="..."> Tags
Most of us already know that the "alt" attribute of the <IMG>
element is important for identifying the content of a graphic image
that may not be visible to the user - perhaps because he has images
turned off, or the image file is not accessible. But the "alt="
attribute is also important in that the most search engines will index
the text they find in the "alt" tag. This means that users can
find relevant pictures as well as words.
Example
Say we have a site with pictures of cool vintage cars. On a page with
several pictures of cars, we might see a picture of a fabulous old
Thunderbird, among others:
<IMG src="tbird.gif"> <IMG src="rambler.gif">
<IMG src="edsel.jpg"> <IMG src="lasalle.gif">
However, a user searching for "thunderbird" might not hit our page,
since that word does not appear. By adding the "alt" tag, we not
only describe the page, but make it more likely to come up on a
search for the keyword "thunderbird photo":
<IMG src="tbird.gif" alt="Photo: '63 Thunderbird">
Now, our page is likely to show up in the search result, assuming the
search engine is good about extracting the "alt" information, which
most do.
NEXT: Making pages relevant
Copyright © 1996 Alma Mater Software, Inc.