17 replies to this topic

[Devil King]

A very nice person from this forum PMed me and brought something to my attn. Now Im in the process to try to fix this error so that my sites gets the right description.

Does Google and all the other top search engines keyword <div title="Welcome to my site. bla bla bla">

[Devil King]

Why I need to know is because my site has images, and menus before all the text, and they menus, header(images) are done from an include in php. So in the end my site looks like it has all the same description on each page. So im looking for a way to put some text over top of the images and menus that the search engine would use, and push the menus text way down to the point that it does not show when someone sees our site on Google.

[awall19]

There are various ways to move the text above images in the eyes of the search engine. One of the more common ones would be through using an external CSS file to organize the page elements.

the title of a div is most likely not weighted highly by search engines since it is a hidden input.

the concept that images hurt your site is incorrect. what hurts is if you use images and do not use any text. if you use plenty of text you should be fine. make sure to structure your page using heading tags, bolding, and bulleted lists where applicable

[Devil King]

Could you show me a snipping of the CSS to do that?

I did a search on poodle and it shows that only the menus as the description, it never gets to the content. So I need a way to get the text content to be top of the page, and not by moving stuff around. I really don’t want to go about and removing the require out of the site and add in the menu by hand on each page. If you want to see my site or test it on poodle to see what im talking about, the url is onewed dot com.

[awall19]

here is a random example using header and content as the two different types of divs.

.header{
valign:top;
position:absolute;
left:250;
padding:5;
}

.content{
position:absolute;
left:250;
top:140;
padding:5;
height:875;
}

[Devil King]

I was being dumb. I know how to do that, I guess I was not thinking of it in the right way. At this point I have opted to go back and input the header into each page. that way I can put some text in the alt tag of the image to get some text for the spider to pickup before its gets to the menu.

[awall19]

If you have a good page title, description tag, and good page content then you do not need to worry much about alt tags. Many search engines do not even index alt information unless the image is in a link.

Also using excessively long strings of alt text is a form of spam, which may or may not eventually get you in trouble.

[Kev]

If you have a good page title, description tag, and good page content then you do not need to worry much about alt tags.

From a SEO point of view that might be true

From an accesibility point of view thats NOT true. Every image should have some sort of text alternative, be it ALT, TITLE or LONGDESC atttributed.

[lepp]

awall19:

Also using excessively long strings of alt text is a form of spam, which may or may not eventually get you in trouble.

How long is too long? Our webpage template has a large image and then 5 or 6 smaller images showing variations of accessories. As we don't want a lot of text cluttering up the page I use alt text to describe the image. Averaging about 70 characters. Too long?

[Kev]

Alt text should be short and to the point and should only be used to describe images that substitute for words e.g. an image that substiutes for a form action or link:

<a href="index.php"><img src="images/buttons/home.gif" alt="Home Page" /></a>

For images that aren't replacing text, use the 'title' or 'longdesc' attributes.

[lepp]

Thanks bwgroup. I wasn't familiar with the title or longdesc attribute but as usual a quick search on the forum found more detailed information. I will be switching over to using title instead of alt for my small image descriptions.

If anyone else is looking for it, there's good information in the middle of http://www.highranki...title attribute

[Devil King]

If you have a good page title, description tag, and good page content then you do not need to worry much about alt tags. Many search engines do not even index alt information unless the image is in a link.

Also using excessively long strings of alt text is a form of spam, which may or may not eventually get you in trouble.

This is what's showing in poodle for my site. its only getting the menus.

Menu ·Home ·Search Vendors ·Article Archive ·Wedding Forums ·Bridal Shows ·Advertising ·Support ·Web Links Sponsored Links Search for wedding...


What should I do if its getting to that first! I need it to get all the good stuff, not the menus.

[lepp]

Sorry to show my ignorance here but what's 'poodle'?

[Devil King]

Sorry to show my ignorance here but what's 'poodle'?

Just go to http://www.gritechno...tools/spider.go and type in your website domain to see what it would look like in a search engine. Its a nice tool!

[lepp]

Thanks Devil King. That was fun and I am very happy with the results - will show off to friends & family.