Alt Tags

[Mike-mijen]

Have a question. Are Alt Tags still good for the major search engines or are they less relied upon by them?|huh

[Greenguy]

Just use them - is it that much of a pain in the ass to insert the text?

[Mike-mijen]

No its not. I was just wondering if they still played a part in seo. Thats all. I just started to build my on linklist for my sponsors and was wondering if they worked still. Also what was wrong with my banner for my hosting company in my sig area?

[Cleo]

I always use them and I see them picked up by SEs.

[Greenguy]

Yes, they are. Any SE verification software tells you there's an error if there's no alt tag.

As far as your sig, I think it was over 120 wide

[Mike-mijen]

Thanks I will fix it!

[LeRoy]

You can name the jpg images with keywords and that would help too.

But yah the alt tags do work and the SE's notice that.

[walrus]

I use alt tags for those really long tail keywords. Seems to work pretty well.

[hincapie]

I always use them, sometimes it seems they have an effect ... no reason not to.

[davion]

Very useful because the image can't be read by SEs. It is use for describing the image. Also the text around the image is also helpful. :D

[MadMax]

I get lazy sometimes, but on principle I intend to always use them. When I'm doing it right, I use alt tags for oddball keywords and misspellings, and I see SE hits from phrases I didn't use anywhere but alt tags.

Short version: yup, use them :)