Search Engine Optimization

Alt and Title Attributes

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Alt and title attributes have been a bit of a grey area for novice web workers and it shows in the constant misuse of the tags I find myself correcting. The two attributes are not interchangeable and they are not intended for the same circumstances, though they are often found used together around linked images. While they may be both okay here, they must be used in the correct tag or their effect is negated.

Having clean, standards correct code is becoming the new hot trend since Google started incorporating page load times and markup validation into their page rank algorithms. This is another step to not only injecting keywords in more places while maintaining valid mark-up on a more robust site.

ALT
<img src="..." alt="The Alt Attribute" />

The alt attribute is used in the image tag (<img />) is designed for text-readers and crawlers to help identify an image, especially when there may be text on that image or is contextually relevant. Because bots can’t “see” images and that which is contained on it (not yet, anyway), the alt-tag offers them a glimpse as to what’s on the image, so they can index it and add in any keywords it may have. It also offers text-readers and those without screens/sight to be able to have some reference to what’s on the image and use it in the context of the page.

The alt tag is a way for crawlers and other search engine bots to read what’s on the image so regardless, make sure you load it with keyword appropriate copy but always make sure it is relevant; keyword spamming here is no bueno. Just use the phrase on the image if that’s all that’s there or use a brief description if it’s an image without text in it.

TITLE
<a href="..." title="The Alt Attribute" >The Title Attribute</a>

The title attribute is used to title elements. This can be used for just about any element and, when used with hyperlinks, allows the user and the crawlers a description of what lies ahead if the link is clicked. The user sees the title attribute as a small balloon next to the cursor when a link is hovered over.

This is, again, a great place for keyword injection but as opposed to providing text readers and crawlers context, the title attribute is seen by all users and can be used with more colorful language and longer descriptions. The title attribute acts in the same manner as the text that the hyperlink it contains in that the text and the title are both used to add keyword juice to the page that’s being linked to.

Last Minute Tip: If you run out of tasks to do, go back and check to make sure each image has an appropriate alt tag and that elements that should have title tags do have them, but don’t get carried away with the keyword spam.

Understanding Page Load Time

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It’s no secret, Google is bringing it’s vision of cloud-based computing to reality with it’s recent release of the Chromebook as well as it’s constant launching of new and innovative cloud-based applications. For Google, one of the main limitations is the high speed internet infrastructure that most Americans use to get online. We live in an expansive country which means laying down new cables to create more bandwidth is a slow and costly endeavor, much slower than the pace at which our technology is innovating and sucking up all that extra bandwidth.

Google found a novel way to mitigate this limitation, by leveraging it’s Search Engine market share to manipulate the web ecosystem to run slimmer. By introducing Page Load Times into the SERP algorithm, Google has incentivized web developers to develop the web on lighter, cleaner, more standards-based markup. This solves the bandwidth capacity issue by having the entire web cutting all their fat, freeing up unneeded bandwidth without having to wait for ISPs to upgrade their lines. Since Google has such a large market share, most users will still trek over to Google without even realizing a change in their search experience. But, their results will slowly begin to show the slimmer sites nearer to the top, which will result in more users clicking the slimmer sites even further freeing up bandwidth by essentially herding users to areas of the web where they will collectively use less bandwidth.

Google is a trend setter and is sometimes flat out copied (both domestically and abroad), so it will come to no surprise when other search engines begin using page load times in their own search algorithms. This will even further expose more users/developers to the slimmed-down web paradigm and further help solve some of the bandwidth issues.

What does this mean for web developers? You need to start cutting the fat.

There are a lot of places you can look to start trimming down your page weight, since each has it’s own nuances I decided to break them up into individual posts you can find below (non-linked items means item coming soon):

  • Images/Sprites
  • Minify HTML, JS and CSS
  • Caching
  • Using CSS3 instead of Images

    • How To: Force On/Off “www.” Subdomain with .htaccess

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    A website can generally be accessed by entering the site’s domain directly (domain.com) or by including a leading “www.” subdomain. This offers increased usability in that users can enter the site in either way but lowers overall SEO in that web crawlers index both addresses as separate sites and will penalize the site for duplicate content.

    This is easily fixed by forcing on or off the “www.” subdomain while allowing the users to enter through both addresses. To do this you can modify your .htaccess file in your site’s root folder by adding in the following mod_rewrite condition. If you have issues with your permalinks or cache after including this condition, move the snippet to the beginning of the .htaccess file. The codes send a 301 redirect while doing their thing so search engine crawlers know that this is a permanent redirect and to reallocate the pagerank data from the defunct subdomain’s pages over to the main domain’s matching pages.
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    Understanding Keyword Density

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    Keyword density is simple enough to understand, the more targeted keywords your page contains, the more likely that term will be associated with that page as a keyword. Since the keyword tag is more-or-less obsolete these days, keyword density is the way search engine spiders and crawlers determine what keywords that page will come up for.
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