"Importance of Using ALT Text and Heading Tags"
by Rob Wiley
If you have a website that you want ranked with higher rankings,
there are several things you can do on your own to increase
rankings. One thing you can do is double check the usage of alt
text and heading tags on your sight.
I've noticed by not having
heading tags and leaving the ALT text blank, search engines like
Google will rank you with a lower score. This has happened to
some of my pages, so I am speaking from experience. Recently I
did a revamp on some of the pages on my site and noticed that my
page ranking had dropped. I couldn't figure it out until finally
I caught a clue, and compared my old pages with the new ones.
The major difference with the pages I compared was the new page
did not have heading tags, and my alt text was not relevant to
the page. Those two little factors dropped my page rank by up to
two points, incredible! You must be very very careful when
updating your pages so this problem does not happen to you.
Below are some tips and ideas based on what Google looks for
with its robots to help when you upgrade and or optimize your
web pages.
First off, where does Google pull text from your page that is
considered relevant? I have read from others and noticed that
Google gets it's text from a combination of places such as:
1. Keyword phrase found in body text
2. META description tag
3. ALT text found on the page, most particularly the first Alt
text.
4. Heading tags, once again most particularly the first Heading tag.
5. Additional heading tags on the page.
6. Additional body text found on the page.
7. Additional ALT text
on the page.
8. Navigation bars
9. General body text
10. Copyright information (usually towards bottom of page).
Now that you know what Google is looking for, you need to know
what to put into these areas. As it stands, I have found out the
hard way that it is a must for you to use alt text and heading
tags.
The text you need to insert into these areas would be the most
relevant search terms that surfers are typing into the search
engines that relate to that particular page. It's that easy! Not
really but if you have not set your pages in this manner or if
you are missing any one of the combinations you might be loosing
points from Google and other search engines page ranking system.
There are plenty of tools on the market that can help with page
optimization. One of my favorites is Web Position Gold. Web
Position Gold will generate pages that are automatically
optimized. The program also has a tool called Page Critic which
will analyze your existing pages and offer suggestions for
better optimization. You can try the program for free at
http://www.nadmedia.net/store.
If you have any questions about
page optimization just give me an email, or read some of my
other articles on page optimization at nadmedia.net. Happy page
building!
About the author:
Rob Wiley has spent the last 14 years serving the media industry
in fields involving graphic design, marketing, website design
and development. His experience has been shared with numerous
businesses that have profited from his advice and skills.