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March 15, 1999
How to Make Better Use of Images
Most Web sites have graphics (i.e., images). Search engines cannot read any keywords or text that you may have embedded in your graphical menu or other images. Therefore, make sure you make use of ALT tags to describe your files. For example, if you have an image like this:
<img src="myimagefile.gif">
enhance it by adding ALT tags:
<img src="myimagefile.gif" ALT="keywords here">
This gives search engines more keywords to find you with and gives Web surfers who turn their graphics off something to read in place of your image. Note: Not all search engines will read the ALT tags, but for those that do, it can help.
Another suggestion made by a customer is to name your image files after the keywords you are targeting. Therefore, if you were trying to rank higher on the word "blue widgets", name your graphic file "blue-widgets.gif". This can't hurt, and it's thought that some engines may give extra relevance to keywords found in the image file name.
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