The ordinary website will have more than just photos or images on a webpage. You will have headers, backgrounds, liners, etc. all of these should also have Alt Image Tags. Although in this age of the broadband Internet, your page loading time is not a major factor as it once was, but you should still reduce all your images so that they will download quickly.
Many professional web designers place unneeded or useless keywords (ones that get no searches) in the graphics on their site. For example, instead of placing ‘Welcome to our site’ in a headline – place it in a graphic at the top of your page. This will free up your headline for your main keywords.
Placing these useless words in a graphic where the robots can’t read them – frees up your Alt Tags for keywords that you’re promoting. Place your main keywords in the headline for better SEO. Keep feeding those spiders!
But always keep in mind, you are creating your content or web pages for real live human beings so you should check to see what your site’s graphics look like in the different browsers. Try here: www.anybrowser.com
Since we have an ever increasing numbers of different screen or display sizes, always check to see how your graphics look on a different size display. You might be horrified to find your perfectly designed page on a 15″ PC is totally distorted on a 17″ widescreen laptop.
Needless to say, for site consistency, keep all your background images and logos the same throughout your site. Same goes for your fonts and text size, it will keep your site’s visitors more focused and on track.
Thumbnails
Many online sites use thumbnails to raise the professional quality of their sites. It makes for a higher standard of design, not to mention, it will increase the usability of your site. It will also increase your click thru rates.
Thumbnails are screen capture shots of a website. They give the surfer some idea of what a site looks like before they visit that site. In a billion site Internet, this can be very important for the promotion of your site.
Using thumbnails will increase the visibility of your site and make it stand out from the crowd. Many professional sites like AOL, Network Solutions, and ALexa use thumbnails. Any site can use thumbnails, check the resource box at the end of this article for further directions on how to place thumbnails on your own site or sites.
Conclusion
Using images, graphics and thumbnails to promote your site can be easily done if you use the advice given above. Always remember to use Alt Image Tags to position your selected keywords or keywords in the search engines. Consistently do this over a long period of time and you will see your site rise in the rankings. Keep those spiders well fed and happy!
More importantly, using these visual aids will also improve the friendliness and usability of your site. It will help raise the professional look and feel of your site so that other webmasters and sites will want to link to your site; further increasing your rankings and the popularity of your site.
Don’t underestimate the power of a simple image – it can do wonders for your site.
