Is it considered keyword stuffing when you place keywords in image alt attributes and noframe tags?

 

I read somewhere that this is perfectly legal.

Is it considered keyword stuffing when you place keywords in image alt attributes and noframe tags?

 

I read somewhere that this is perfectly legal.

 

I think it is considered safe to do so, as far as I know. I have put some keywords in the image tags of my site at: www.karlbowers.co.uk . I read somewhere, or in one of the books I have, that it helps google (when crawling your site) to be aware of the subject of your site. For example if its a webpage with BMW cars image on it on a car-sales website, you would logically put BMW keyphrasing into those image tags.

 

I am no SEO expert though, but that my thoughts on keyphrases in image tags.

 

Karlos

Noframes content you can just about get away with.. but then the question arrises, why on earth are you using frames if you know what SEO is? search engine spiders do NOT like frames

 

As for alt tags... its like anything else

 

does 'designer discount high quality shoes for sale online' have keywords? yes. is it keyword stuffing? yes

 

does 'designer shoes' have keywords? yes. is it keyword stuffing? no

 

Using SEO key phrases is very simple, if its difficult or annoying for YOU to read, then you'd tried too hard, and chances are a spider will isntantly recognise it as keyword stuffing.

It is Google-legal... in moderation.

 

Using Karlos's BMW image example:

 

Okay - Red BMW Z3 used car for sale in Altoona, PA

Not Okay - BMW, Z3, car, sale, buy, buy my car, omg, red bmw, blue bmw, purple bmw, bmw sales, bmw used car, used z3, rattletrap bmw

 

ETA: Neuro, you type too quickly.

The alt tag should really describe what the image is so that people who have screenreaders etc can still use your site.

The alt tag should really describe what the image is so that people who have screenreaders etc can still use your site.

 

Absolutely, if you use alt attributes properly you shouldn't need to worry about the "stuffing"

The alt tag should really describe what the image is so that people who have screenreaders etc can still use your site.

 

valid point Jmz !

Thats all well and good but from a screen reader point of view "red bmw" would be best, from an seo point of view "buy red bmw online" etc would be far more effective and would not be a hinderance to the site

I concur with the fundamentals that it is about accessibility (and so I suppose we should be grammatically correct), but have heard speculation that after 5/6 words you are unlikely to be paid attention to by Googlebot. There are some that talk about page density of KW to keeping it below 5% also... aahh second guessing Google, what a fun activity and responsible for gallons of snake oil, and legions of straw men!

The best thing to do is try a few competitive keywords, then go through the top 5 listings and view the source code.

Absolutely, if you use alt attributes properly you shouldn't need to worry about the "stuffing"

 

I agree with you.. Using appropriate keywords that are related to your site's them for your alt tags is the best way to avoid keyword stuffing...

Don't try and get too clever.... just try and think has someone tried this before - and the answer will normally be yes.

 

What you need to work on is your keyword density on the page - you need to get the correct number of words on the page firstly, say between 300 and 900 then you need the density of the keywords you are targeting to be correct. Then you need lots of quality inbound links with the keywords as anchor text. Thinks about how you can start a viral marketing campaign that mean people will want to add a link on their website to your specific page. Forget about trying to fiddle around with keywords in image alt tags - if it is an image of a 1987 red BMW coupe then that is what your alt text should be - things like google image search are becoming more important for visitor numbers so name the image correctly with the correct alt text and that will bring in more traffic in itself. Just keep adding more good quality content.

Thanks for the input guys. I just implemented some of the suggestions here. They were implemented in this Philippine real estate website that I created as a real estate agent.

 

Few additional questions:

1. I read somewhere that whenever google bans a website, they only ban the first subfolder. For example, when they ban www.domainname.com/folder1, they do not ban www.domainname.com/folder2?
   
2. If I moved my website to a new subfolder, removed all that is apparently keyword stuffing, but the content of the page remains the same, would google ban a website only because it has content identical to one that they previously banned?
   

Noframes content you can just about get away with.. but then the question arrises, why on earth are you using frames if you know what SEO is? search engine spiders do NOT like frames

 

Hi! I know someone would ask this question. Actually, I am using iframes. I use iframes on navigation menus for the following reasons:

1. I think google counts the navigation menu as identical content since it appears on all pages, hence dragging my score down.
   
2. I want my html with more content and less formatting, which I did by using CSS and by having the navigation as separate website.
   
3. If I add new section, I only need to update the frame that serves as navigation bar, no need to edit each and every page.
   

Any more effective ways of dealing with the redundancy of navigation menu?

it is not a keyword stuffing unless your keyword density exceed at 4%! you have to observe your keywords!

The alt tag should really describe what the image is so that people who have screenreaders etc can still use your site.

 

Not quite correct. It should be an alternative to the image. Not a description. Significant difference.

it is not a keyword stuffing unless your keyword density exceed at 4%! you have to observe your keywords!

 

Thats not true, webpages take on many different forms and having a keyword density of over 4% is not stuffing or spamming.

 

As far as alt tags are concerned they are for accessibility- therefore describe what the image displays, but i see no harm in adding the word "buy" or "online" if it is suitable for that image.

As long as the alt tag is used to describe the image properly, its ok and in fact is a good design practice.