Often neglected by web designers and SEO experts is the use of alt attributes. Although these tags were designed to allow users with screen readers to understand the content of a webpage, they are also a valuable SEO tag.

You often hear people talk about the importance of using keywords in your heading tags and using bold and strong tags to emphasise text, but I very rarely hear people talk about the alt attribute. Recently SEOMoz did some studies on the usage of keywords and found that surprisingly the alt attribute had more weighting than the heading tags.

When I am doing SEO for clients or myself I try and make sure that my alt tags are as descriptive as possible without being spammy. I have provided a template and a few examples to help you with your own SEO.

Template

Service/Product | Location/s | Secondary Keyword

Examples

Accountancy Services, Guildford, Essex- Payroll Services
iPhone covers, UK- iPhone Accessories

If anyone would like further advice or help please get in touch

Over the past few month’s I have noticed irrelevant results appearing in the Google.co.uk SERPS! Many of the sites are US sites and some are even Canadian, Australian or Even Korean. There’s no question that some of these sites are irrelevant to searchers.

One example I took a look at is “LG Laptop Battery”

The first 2 results are great, both .co.uk domains and both UK sites. However the next result is a .au site, an Australian site. The next is a US site, then another Australian site and 3 more US sites, lastly is a .co.kr.

Now I don’t have a problem with buying product from another country, sometime you can get great bargains, however the shipping fee is bound to be high, especially from Australia, not to mention it will take a while to get here.

I have noticed similar results to these when searching for other products, and to me these searches should be mostly UK, as that is where I want to buy from.

Dave Naylor had looked at the possibility of this being a conspiracy to promote US sites, however I think it’s purely a problem with the algorithm, especially as it’s not all US sites appearing.

Also with Google Caffeine just around the corner you would expect a fix, however using the same search term, although different results I am still getting US and Australian site, not good!

Google Caffeine might not be the pick me up after all.

P.S Here is a link to the UK version of Google Caffiene

There is often debate about the use of the w3c validator for SEO. Is it really worth your time and effort to get that green “Passed” sign on the w3c validator?