Help with Alt Text etc

elephantarse

After running a small business for many years, we have just discovered the benefits of adding 'alt text' to our images - so we have been changing all our images to contain words in the alt text section, but what else do we need to do, once the image has been saved and you reload it - the alt text seems to have disappeared, how do I know if its been saved and will be affective once reloaded onto the website

how do I look at the alt text in google images?

We are working with an iMac with MSOffice 2011

AndyPix

Im not sure you understand this fully ..

Alt text is written into the code of a website in the HTML

example of a code snippet to display an image, with some alt text :-

<img src="picture.jpg" alt="this is your alt text">

But as you are using a mac and an obscure version of office, there may be very well something im missing.
Don't they have "apple geniuses" (pmsl) you can ask ??

elephantarse

no I don't understand, am a novice at all this and someone the other day suggested I add 'alt text' to images to be recognised in google among my competitors.

What does it all mean

AndyPix

It means you need to edit the code of your website to include alt text in the image placement code, as shown above ..

Alt text is the text that appears on a website when you hover the mouse over a picture

Did you make your website yourself , or did someone do it for you ?

Andy

elephantarse

The website was built by a professional company recently, I'm having to go in and add the alt text myself. This was suggested by a friend to bulk up my traffic.

I also have an eBay shop. But if you search google/google images the competitors' eBay shop dominates google - how do I get mine in there?! eBay shop or the website

AndyPix

There are many many ways to optimise your site for search.
Adding alt text to your images will help, as long as the text is relevant to the image of course ..

So you need to edit the code of your website to add the alt text - as I outlined above.

Contact your web developer if you don't know how to do this yourself as there are too many variables to make it viable to explain here to you .

Andy

elephantarse

Thank you, we don't understand how our competitors have managed to get all their images from both their eBay shops all over google images. How is this possible?

The actual website is quite straight forward.

Thank you for your time

elephantarse

Also, when I describe my image in alt text, do I just type words or do I add the html format as above? (sorry)

AndyPix

Its possible because google is determining that these are images are relevant to the keyword that you have searched on.

The way in which it determines this is a secret - and there is a whole industry dedicated to trying to figure it out.

Its called SEO (search engine optimisation) - and it costs money ..
Depending on what returns you envisage, it may or may not be worth you contacting an SEO company.

In the meantime, make sure your site is relevant to the keywords you want to be found using, make sure your site is updated regularly, try to get other sites to link to yours, and get that alt text put in your images .

Andy

AndyPix

elephantarse wrote: »

Also, when I describe my image in alt text, do I just type words or do I add the html format as above? (sorry)

You are missing the point..

The way to add alt text to your images on your site, is to EDIT THE WEBSITES CODE, as I outlined above .. Or have your web developers add a function for you to add alt text at the point of upload.
This could be achieved using some pretty simple PHP ..

This is not for the layman - it is for the developer of your website

bod1467

And to throw another curve ball ... some browser's won't show a tooltip for the Alt text, so you should also include a Title attribute as well.

<img src="whatever.jpg" alt="My alt text" title="My alt text" />