Non Text Words
The all important search engines need to
find text on your pages.
There are several ways in which this can be
done (although search engines may vary enormously)
| Actual content | Found in Body of page <body> </body> |
| Page Title | <title> </title> tag found in head of
page <head> </head> |
| Description | Meta
tag found in head of page <head> </head> |
| Keywords |
Meta tag found in head of page <head> </head> |
| Alt
Tags on pictures | Found in body with img src tag, alt="" |
Names of pictures
| image.jpg, image.gif
|
| Table Name | Found after <table> tag, name="" |
Alt text tags on graphics
There are other reasons why you
should include alt tags on graphics. Firstly visually impaired surfers may be
using a program which "reads" the page to them. If there's no text on
the image to explain what it is then they'll miss out. Secondly, there are people
who surf with images turned off - it speeds up surfing. Certainly they'll miss
out on what images are. Why not include alt text tags and include these two groups
of people from your site?
Search engines also take note of alt text tags,
so it makes sense to include them.
Bobby Approved
Bobby is
a rating system for accessibility. Have
a look to see if your site is fully accessible
Search engines
and text
The majority of search engines are clever enough to know when
they're being spammed, and if they're not yet, then they soon will be. Including
multiple keywords on a page in the same colour as a background is definately not
a good idea. How many times have you been lured to a page on false pretences?
How many times have you returned to that page? It's likely that you never have.
As well as having good quality, well written and presented text as content
on your page, you can add good quality words into your page description, your
file names, and into your image names.
All the words on your page can
contribute to getting a better search engine listing. So start thinking about
your graphics. Could you rename them? Calling an image elephant.jpg is better
than calling it pic0037.jpg . It'll also help you remember what the images are
when you're (if you ever do) look at the source html.
Also keep the image
names all lower case. For some servers this isn't a problem, but on others it
will be.
Start good habits now, and keep them forever.