Image Alt Tags

[David M. Graham]

Good points Tom.

First, the latest data available indicates that Google IGNORES meta tags for purposes of page ranking and listing placement.  They are used in creating entries only - and that is a great reason to use them and use them correctly.

Second, the decision as to which field is to be used should be made based on the actual content of the cart and which set of words offers the best bang for the buck.  This varies a lot from one site to the next.  A cookie cutter approach is better than nothing - but not necessarily by much.   

Finally - those alt tags have significant impact on accessibility.  Something which may be as important as SEO to most sites.  I think again, that the decision should be made case by case, and image by image.

David

[zip1]

products_head_title_tag is used for the page title most search engine require this to be some what small.
where products_head_desc_tag can be larger. So products_head_desc_tag most likely would be a better choice to use.  There is also some restrictions on the size of the products_head_desc_tag. But I can't remember them off the top of my head.

As far as SEO it depends on which search engine. Google being the largest is the most obvious target.  I have seen some info , that Google relies less on meta tags now days and more on actual page content.

Some smaller, and subject specific search engine use older methods where the use the title tag for the the title of the entry. and description for the description of the entry. Both of these have character limits

[David M. Graham]

products_head_title_tag or products_head_desc_tag

If you are already pulling the description into the title tag storage it makes no difference.  If you are not, I would use the title tag here so as to avoid excessive duplication of content.  Mainly, you only want to increase the usage of key words in the page.  Otherwise you are diluting the keyword strength.  The title tag should have the lowest concentration of null or stop words of the two fields here.

David

[maestro]

Heh nice one, I am also a "Hi-Tech" redneck, though i doubt I carry the vocabulary of some, I do have plenty compared to the normal everyday farm-boy (no offense, I used to be one). And ahev a question as to which DB entry you folks think would be the best of these two for now?

products_head_title_tag or products_head_desc_tag

and thanks again!

[David M. Graham]

By the way - I applaud your choice of test images.  The mudflap girl is a classic icon of my own Southern United States redneck heritage. 

You might well ask why I would  use such "pompous" and stiffly correct language were I indeed a proper "redneck".  Well, I am a high tech redneck who is well aware that proper use of standard English is one of the more powerful weapons in the SEO tool kit.  As we're discussing SEO, I thought I would throw that in..

Anyway - I don't see a reason to select a new field to use for this until full alt tag support can be built for each informational image used.  The current default product name tag should suffice.

David

[David M. Graham]

Good question, Gerald.

This particular application makes it even more interesting.  Whatever field you pull is likely to be wrong - with three or more images it simply becomes keyword spamming to some spider or another, and in any case the duplicate content is less than useful to the user - which last is most important.

That said, I would tend to pull the product meta tag description field.  Its shorter, it should be informative and relevant already and this usage encourages its presence in the record.

The meta title tag should be used as a title, not to hold the description.

Regards,

David

[maestro]

Thanks Dave for starting this thread in response to a Skype question i posted to a few friends. I have started a small mod for translating the product description to other installed languages in the cart. Here is the demo. The "title" tag has been coded to pull the product description (translated in the lang of the flag it represents) and I was wondering what folks think would be the best bit of data to pull from the Database for the "alt" tag if any? And what we all think might possibly yield the best SEO returns from the piece of data?

Thanks All! i am open to any/all ideas for this effort and plan to release this as a FREE RCI mod for CRE/273/EOS, and possibly more.

[David M. Graham]

I was recently asked "what you guys think would be the best piece of data to pull for the image "alt" tag? any ideas?"

My response is that it depends on what the image is used for. Wether they are navigational, informational or structural.

Structural images should have blank alt tags.

Navigational images should have alt tags that relate to the destination page.

Informational images should have alt tags that relate to the content to which  the image is related.

David