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Images Can Get Your Webpages Visited AND Revisited
By: Arthur L Browning
The visual presentation that your webpage offers is based on design and images. Graphics, photos, original art all play strong roles in that overall visual presentation. The quality and arrangement of these images is crucial in getting and holding the visitor's attention - instead of losing or abusing the visitor's attention.
In addition to the look of your images you should optimize them with tags, keywords, and search engine-friendly captions where appropriate. To make the best of your webpage's images you will need to observe some strong suggestions.
"Alt Image Tags" for your images should be optimized for search engines. Search Engine robots cannot see the images on your website - they see only text - whatever text you write into the Alt Image Tags.
About Alt Image Tags: All images have HTML code - whether thumbnail, photo, drawing etc. The Alt Image Tag is: Alt="Your Keyword Image"
These keyword-accurate Alt Image Tags should appear on every image, even headers, background images, thumbnails, etc. Keep your Tag brief but include at least one main keyword.
Internet Marketing demands that the images contain the necessary keywords in the Alt Image Tags as well as repeating the keywords several times throughout the page's text. Adding that keyword to the URL of the page is an excellent idea as well. Some Internet marketing specialists will tell you to include the keyword phrase in the last 25 words of the page as well.
While your images should be easily indexable they should also be attractive to the visitor. Even the best designers will get a second opinions from other experts on the look of the site - how it feels to the visitor. Do your images make it easy and enjoyable to navigate throughout the website? They absolutely should.
Also, image file size is still a major factor in loading time. Just because designers and tech-savvy urbanites have Broadband internet service doesn't mean everyone does. If your images are in large files they take longer to load. This means many people will not visit your page, they will leave. If they don't visit they will certainly never revisit your webpage.
And remember to see your webpage in all available browsers, especially Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Opera, and Safari. Viewing your webpage on different screen or display sizes will let you check the visual presentation as different viewers will find it. And the difference can be major.
To maintain Unity in the appearance of your website you should be consistent with the visual presentation - keep backgrounds, color combinations, fonts, framing and spacing, logo size and style, and text sizes all the same.
Using quality images with good tags and file sizes that are well arranged within an attractive and unified website will make your webpage Visited AND Revisited.
Arthur Browning
Arthur Browning began his career teaching technical writing in a small Midwestern university for 15 years. He later edited and published a national professional journal for some ten years. He is now an investor. His interests include art collecting, web marketing, writing. |
