I use an HTML editor to build my pages. Unlike WYSIWYG editors, HTML editors have a code-based interface. I’ve tried all the WYSIWYG editors but I find I work best with my Arachnophilia program. The great thing is that because I work directly with code, I learn code. I could now write HTML in notepad if I wanted to. I don’t want to. I like my little editor. It saves me tedium. It doesn’t misspell tags or leave out vital characters.
|
"In an image heavy business, the ALT tag is your special friend." |
I bring up the subject of my HTML editing program because Arachnophilia has default settings just like most software. If you want to add a text link, you click a button on the toolbar and a skeleton tag appears on your document. If you wish to add an image, you click a toolbar button and Arachnophilia (by default) pastes this onto your document:
I first started using this software in 1997. I took me until 1998 before I found out what the ALT meant. Before I did, I’d just leave the empty tag in my code. When I finally figured out what the ALT was for, it took me another few months to realize the power of the ALT tag.
In an image tag, the IMG SRC part stands for image source. The image source is the name of the particular image file you’re adding to the HTML document. The ALT portion of the tag stands for alternative text. The alt tag is primarily added to an image tag for accessibility reasons. The alternative text serves as content when an image can not be either rendered or read.
For instance, when a surfer has disabled images in their browser program the ALT tag insures the surfer will have some alternative text to read in place of the disabled image. ALT tags enable vision-impaired users to enjoy the content on your site through the use of text-to-speech reader software. I learned about the purpose of the ALT tag when I visited the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) site. If you ever want to get your site compliant accessibility-wise, I suggest you review accessibility standards at the W3C (http://www.w3c.org).
The important point to take into account when considering your ALT tags is this: text. Text is fast loading. Text is informative. Text is read by the robots and spiders of search engines.
Untitled Page
While visually impaired surfers achieve inclusion when you flesh out your ALT tags, the more significant fact is that ALT tags help improve the searchability of a website. Search engines send out their robots, which read the text on a submitted website. That spidered text will determine whether and how a site is indexed. Some spiders delve deep into a web while others skim the first few lines of HTML code. However the search engines analyze the content in your web, it’s done in a text-based fashion. Search engine robots pretty much ignore images. That’s why the ALT tag is one tag you shouldn’t ignore.
Many novice adult webmasters make their first mistake at the very top of their page. Some search engine spiders only read your TITLE tag, your META tags and maybe a few lines of your BODY code before they return to their servers with results. If you’ve filled that space with an image logo, you’ve wasted precious indexing property. In other words, the SE robot looks for text and the first thing it reads in the body of your page is an image with no alternate text. If you have your page on free hosting with embedded headers, you’re even more lost if you don’t add ALT text to your logo image tag.
ALT text will also lessen the clutter in your META tags.
Instead of flooding your TITLE tags and KEYWORD tags, you can add descriptive alternate text to your logo/header image. When it comes to SE positioning, you really can’t have enough text. In an image heavy business, the ALT tag is your special friend.
So when you add an image to your new adult page, don’t forget the ALT tag. Put some relevant text within those little quotation marks. If it’s your logo image, repeat your page title along with a description full of keywords. If it’s another image, enhance it with some teasing sales copy. That doesn’t mean you need to add ALT text to all your images. It would be silly to add ALT text to graphic page decorations.
Nevertheless, there are images on your page and some of them will serve you better if you enhance them with alternative text.