From the category archives:

HTML

How To Create Effective Alt Image Attributes

Overview

Hopefully you are at least somewhat familiar with alt text. This is the text that you see if your image can not be displayed. The text that can be read for a person that is vision impaired. The text that search engines “see” since they can not describe your image, you have to do it for them. To be technically correct, this is the alt attribute of the “img” tag.

Guidelines for alt text:

  1. Ensure that the text alternatives communicate the purpose of the graphic accurately and succinctly.
  2. Provide empty alt text for graphics which do not convey content.
  3. Provide alt text for both the main image and the hot spots of image maps.
  4. Do not repeat the alt text of an image in the adjacent text.
  5. Do not put important images in the background.

The Importance of Alternative Text

One of the biggest accessibility problems on the Web today is the lack of alternative text for graphics and images. Individuals who are blind often use screen readers or refreshable Braille devices that read the text on the page to them. When these technologies come across images without alt text, they are unable to communicate the meaning of the image.

When a screen reader comes across an image with no alt attribute, there are a couple of things that could happen:

  1. It could simply skip the image as if it were not even on the page.
  2. It could find some text that is associated with the image such as the file name and read that instead.
  3. The exact behavior of the screen reader varies between brands and the Web page itself. In either case the end result is undesirable. The user either misses the image content completely or gets some text that is probably meaningless.

How Images Are Used

Images on Web sites are used in four ways:

  1. a picture is worth a thousand words - it just helps you describe beyond words
  2. an aid to visualize important concepts
  3. to provide visual enhancements which offer no real content - just pretty
  4. to link to other areas of the site (instead of anchor text)

The most appropriate alt text for an image depends on the way in which the image is used. In fact, the same image could be used for different reasons under different circumstances, and each instance of this image would have different alternative text. Keep the following rule in mind:

Communicating the Purpose of the Graphic

The most appropriate alt text communicates the purpose of the graphic, not its appearance, and the most important information to convey in alternative text is if the user can click on the image to go to another area of the site.

If the image or graphic contains information that is relevant to the content of the site, then the alt attribute should also provide that content, in a way that is consistent with the purpose of the image. Remember that the purpose of the image is not necessarily the same as the appearance of the image.

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Things That Help Your Page Rank and Things That Hurt Your Page Rank

Things That Help Page Rank:

These factors will probably change over time, once someone figures how to “beat the system”. Some these variables are more important than others:

  • Keywords in the title tag
  • Keywords in the description tag
  • Keywords in the keywords tag
  • Changing and increasing content
  • Keywords in your headlines
  • Keywords in your content
  • Keywords in the top 25% of the page
  • Keywords in the bottom 25% of the page
  • Using HTML emphasis on Keywords (Bold, Italics, Underline et cetera)
  • Incoming link popularity - if sites that point to you have a high PR it is a good thing
  • Keywords in the names of linked pages Cover Hypnosis Expert Kevin Hogan is better than Kevin Hogan and the actual site name has the lowest value (but better than nothing)
  • Keywords in alt tags and as names of images
  • Getting listings in Pay-Per-Click search engines like Google Adwords or in Overture
  • Listings in directories

Things That Hurt Page Rank:

  • Spamming by using the same word or phrase several times in your title, meta tags, or text. Buy you new shoes from our shoe site by visiting our shoe forum and choosing from our shoe gallery! The sentence might be readable, but it is spam.
  • Keyword density over 5% which may be considered keyword spamming.
  • Spamming by putting words or phrases into your meta tags or title that have nothing to do with the actual content people see on your web page.
  • Too many outbound links, even if they are to sites related to your topic. If you want to have hundreds of links, make a link page.
  • Using text the same color as the background. Years ago, I could not figure why I landed on a site that had nothing to do with my search.
  • Using tiny text (font size “-1″ or smaller) as a way to cram keywords into a page
  • Linking out to link farms or free-for-all (FFA) link pages.
  • Links coming in from link farms or FFA link pages
  • Linking out to sites that have nothing to do with the focus or niche of your site (For a class Kevin Hogan gave in 2006 he linked from KevinHogan.com to everyone that attended his class, causing his PR to drop one point.)
  • Unknown. Since we don’t know the actual algorithm used there may be things that we don’t know that hurt your page rank. If you think something may hurt your site, don’t do it.

Follow these basic rules and you will be on your way to getting your page ranked properly.

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A Language Known As HTML

Since 1995 or so websites have become one of the most popular means for companies and people to reach their customers and share information.

A language known as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is used to make web sites. HTML is a set of instructions to the web browser that are inside these guys, < > and you seldom get to see them. When you’re done with an instruction, you end it with < / >. Inside those brackets, you need a command, like HR - to make a horizontal rule (also known as a line across the page).

When I go to begin a web page, I type commands like these WITHOUT the spaces.

< HTML >
< HEAD >
< TITLE >Ya Gotta have a title < /TITLE >
< /HEAD>
< BODY>

You can also control the size of your text ( < font >), underlined words, bolding and italics (even all 3 together). There are headline and a buncha sub-headlines. There are different ways to end a paragraph. Since the time that Tim Berners-Lee invented web sites, more ways have been developed to make website development faster and easier. What separates one website from another is design.

< CENTER> oh, yeah, you can center things. < /CENTER>

When designing a website consider the following key elements: the purpose of the site, the possible audience, content structure, and the design compatibility. Is this site needed at all?

Anyone about to create a web site should take the time to right a statement that says what the site is used for and what visitors can get from it. This will help the designer to plan a proper outline of how the website can be broken down and modified over time should (when) the need arises - having a long-term objective is a pretty good idea.

Who will be visiting your site? Women 16 - 26 from France and Belgium? Japanese men? In terms of audience, what is the target market. When you are doing this you should be able to narrow it down to one person who is your sample visitor. Killian Chad will be our sample person. He has an age, sex, marital status, he has (or doesn’t have) pets and so many other details that you can point out.

Sure, there is only one Killian, but you have to have a target in mind and saying Killian is easier than “Women 16 - 26 from France and Belgium”. Site visitors will be viewing the site for different reasons, a designer should know what those reasons are so she can try to make the site hit that customers ideas, and if the designer is good enough you may get return visits.

Content is the most important aspect of a web site. It is also the most time-consuming section of the website. Try to guess how long it took me to write this 850-word article. A good site needs hundreds (thousands?) of pages to be worthwhile and to give customers reason to return. If they don’t come back, they don’t spend money. Very important note here so I will < EM> emphasize < /EM> it. Your average visitor will not spend money. Your return visitors are those that have the greatest chance of forking over money for you.

A lot of planning is required because this will be the most dynamic part of the site. This means that the information will keep changing every now and then. This is especially true if the website deals with articles changing every day like newspaper websites. Content may also mean the way a product is advertised or presented to the user. The more attractive the graphics are and the catchier the copy is, the more it will help get more customers to a website. Copy is the text content that is included on the website.

Another tricky part about web design is making it compatible for all kinds of web browsers. A web browser is what a person will use to access the website, and probably how you are reading this. Some browsers change a web site’s look. The designer has to keep in mind that programming is still essential in page layout.

It is tricky but not very difficult since not only a lot of tweaking of measurements will be made to adjust the website dimensions. Only test on Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox (75% MS and 13% FF) - the other browsers only count about 5% of all users Online statistic I found at TheCounter http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/October/browser.php

The Web has changed the way businesses are run. People (like me) actually think to buy online before going to a store. I went 2 years without going into a bookstore. To get people to part from their hard-earned cash and buy items online (at your online store) is reason enough to have a good-looking site with interesting and accurate content. A professional looking site may help you generate more transactions and lead to more sales and higher more moo-lah in your pocket.

I am about to end this article< /BODY>
< /HTML> There, it’s all over.

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