alt tags for images

Can you overoptimize with alt tags?

At the moment i have 20 items for sale and they all have the same alt tag "blue widget" for example.

Is this bad?

Also what should i do for insignificant images? Just tag them with a keyword?

No its not bad, but it would be nice if you could give your images a specific name to categorize them but if its category is blue widgets then by all means go for it, as for insignificant images i suggest you still put alt tags on them, this is so that your site can be easily crawled by Google and this would be good for your site.

thanks man i will do this now

Is this bad?

Click to expand...

Yes.
Ideal, if all alt tags will be unique. For example: "blue widget", "blue widget 1", "my blue widget"

Make it look natural. If the image is about a black dog, then black dog is the correct alt tag. If you add the term to all images, logos and every single icon on the site, then it'll probably not be very helpful

Alt image tag are where you can actually spam and get away with it if you are smart.

The alt tag is supposed to enable someone who cannot get the image to display will know what the image was about.

If your image was a black dog, your alt tag shoudl not be black dog, that tells the visually impaired person very little.

It should be "Barney, a black lab and graduate of Thomson dog training academy" or something descriptive that actually helps you.

You can even get away with a couple of "logos". Use a generic png, and call it "carpet cleaning logo", and the next one "hardwood floor repair logo", just don't go nuts.

What you do not want to do is use the picture of the dog and call it "carpet celeaning logo".

Remember that this text counts as page content too, so using a lot of keywords in them will hurt. If you get a manual review your site will take a hit if the alt tag doesn't describe what the image is within reason.

Use these intelligently and it will boost your SEO, go nuts and you will shoot yourself in the foot.

I think you should use diversity tags related to your target keyword such as" yellow widgets" "widgets online"... and so on

Alt tags are extremely helpful as are image captions, so I suggest you add them too. As others have suggested, it might be a good idea if you diversify your tags according to what's on the image, but the generic tag can stay there. Like ‘blue widget', ‘blue widget for this', ‘blue widget to help you with that', ‘popular blue widget'. It will be helpful if you add a more detailed description of the image and as an additional advantage, might also add a few keywords that you will rank for.

Go for different Keywords, if you have to many images with the same alt text it can look spammy.

Alt text is an important yet occasionally overlooked part of making a site accessible to all users.

To include it, you simply add alt="this is your alt text" to your image tag. Here's an example:
<img src="computer.jpg" alt="Computer" />

I use alt tag in my images and all have one keyword but different descriptions. The tag gives a good idea of what the pic is about and at the same time the keywords help me to do some seo.

I think using the same description for all your pics doesn't let you take full advantage of this tag.

its always helpful to give the related name to ur images in the alt tag bar...this will help in easy searching and google creeping

According to my suggestion better use proper alt tag for each and every images. Don't do keyword stuffing in alt tag.
its mainly used for, when the site is loading its shows the appropriate text for that image.