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Generally good ideas, but I disagree with your use of the ALT image property. The purpose of ALT is to describe an image to people who can't see it. (This is different from TITLE, whose purpose is to provide additional information for people who CAN see it. ALT text and TITLE text should never be the same.) That includes the visually impaired and those whose browsers don't display it - perhaps because they've been set to download images only on request. Any use of ALT text for SEO has to be secondary to this fundamental purpose. This example should be . That should be as good for SEO, and it's a lot better for what the purpose of ALT text is in the first place.
Apparently this site edited out text that it thought was HTML. The missing "this example should be" near the end of the above post should have read, in angle brackets which I left out this time:
img src=i/red-blood-cells-image.jpg alt=image of human red blood cells /
(There doesn't seem to be any way to edit posts here. If I missed it, my apologies for doing this instead.)
img src=i/red-blood-cells-image.jpg alt=image of human red blood cells /
(There doesn't seem to be any way to edit posts here. If I missed it, my apologies for doing this instead.)
It is true that the primary goal of alt text is to provide assistance for the impaired and for screen readers. The examples provided in this piece are best practices for leveraging SEO for your images, therefore, the key for you as a developer or stakeholder in your web development is to strike a balance between what is right for your users, and your customer requirements, and then apply what you can in the way of SEO. The only real "required by law" 508 compliance in the US is imposed for government sponsored web sites, i.e. *.gov, and I can tell you that it is a daily struggle for getting them to 100% compliance with every pixel on the page. Have you ever had the task of tagging a 38+ page PDF with graphics on every page for 508 compliance?
I totally agree with EGM42. Not only that but for UK based sites there is a legal requirement that they are usable by, e.g., people using screen readers. The advice given here on using ALT for SEO in the way described would arguably make a site non-compliant in that respect. Not that anyone seems to ever be even given a slap on the wrist for that, let alone prosecuted :/
@EGM42
Normally there is an "Edit" link at the bottom of your previously posted comment.
Sometimes you have to refresh the page before it will appear.
You also have to be in the "See all comments" section.
This particular page seems to be broken, as I can't even "Reply" to anyone's posts.
Normally there is an "Edit" link at the bottom of your previously posted comment.
Sometimes you have to refresh the page before it will appear.
You also have to be in the "See all comments" section.
This particular page seems to be broken, as I can't even "Reply" to anyone's posts.
Sure would be nice if the folks who run this website read your article! Your red blood cell image is tagged as follows:
I am not sure what CMS is used by the editors here at TR, but I did mention that in the article "...images get lost in the fray as part of a template, sidebar, or widget within a Content Management System (CMS)"
I always try to reduce image size, page loads faster and search engines love that. I use Image Tools http://imdrops.com for that.
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