You may ask, why speed? The explanation is obvious. Speed is at the center of ecommerce. Today, niches prosper on the speed of the Internet marketplace to showcase and sell products. Think about the main events from the past ten years that have shaped online traffic, altered buying habits, and changed Internet surfing behavior. These changing patterns are taken for granted today. All you have to do is login to Twitter and see the hot topics for the day or go over to Google and check out Insights and Trends.

The Internet provides information at lightning speed. If anything critical happens in the world the communication of the Internet brings it to light within minutes. Speed is the essence of the Internet. Topics come and go at the speed of light. That’s why speed is such an essential part of SEO. It’s human nature to place more value on current content than old and stale content. Because of split second communication online, content does not stay fresh for long. If fact, compared to the offline world things move over ten times faster online. Your content must keep pace with the rapidly changing trends of the world so your product or service won’t be viewed as out-dated.

Why is this necessary for SEO? If your website is not up to date with current industry trends then you may be missing out on large amounts of traffic provided by search engines. Without this free organic traffic source you will certainly miss out on lots of potential sales opportunities. Speed is the fundamental element that must be incorporated into your overall Internet marketing strategy. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to sustain a top position within your niche and will end up chasing after the crumbs left by swifter competitors.

When you plan your next SEO campaign, make speed an integral part of this strategy. Trying to get a top ranking with ultra competitive keywords against well-established players is more than likely a waste of your time. Those websites have been on top search page results for years. If you explore your own path, taking into account new trends, then it will not be so difficult. Research secondary keyword phrases with good levels of traffic and commerciality that people use to search for products in your niche. Everyday, the value of keywords go up or down depending on social trends. By going through this procedure you can maximize your speed and position your site as the leader in your niche. It’s a fact, the longer you stay at the top of a keyword results page that’s trending up, the more products you will ultimately sell.

Are you ready to get there? Remember, the marketplace waits for no one. What’s fashionable today may be forgotten tomorrow. Monitor trends and make speed a priority with your next SEO campaign strategy by pouncing on hot markets as soon as they occur.

Wayne Hairston has been a webmaster and Internet marketer since 1997. He has published several articles on the subject about Internet Marketing. The Race For the Top Starts Now! Check out the free Get a #1 Google Ranking report. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.

Article Source: Get Speedy Google Rankings

Well to start, I want to provide a brief introduction of each attribute to help you understand their “intended” purpose.

The alt attribute is, popularly and incorrectly referred to as an alt tag and is commonly misunderstood to provide a tool-tip for an image. Both of these are incorrect. First of all, the alt attribute is an attribute and not a tag. The alt attribute was always intended to provide alternative information about an element and is generally required for image and image maps and is not meant to be used to display a tool-tip. The alt attribute, can be used for the img, area, and input elements to help provide alternative information to users who cannot display that element in their browser. As an example, here is how you would define an alt attribute for an image: . If the image is not displayed the text, “this is our company logo” will be displayed in the place of the image.

The title attribute, on the other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element, which is displayed as a tool-tip by most graphical browsers. The title attribute can be used to describe any HTML element except for base, basefont, head, html, meta, param, script, and title.

An excellent use for the title attribute is to provide descriptive text within an anchor tag to let the users know where the link will direct them if they click on it. When the user places their mouse over the link, it will display a small tool-tip displaying the title text that you’ve provided. An example would be < a href=”linkpath.html” title=”more information about our company”>

So as you can see the alt and title attributes have different purposes but how do they affect SEO? This is the true question we all want to know and understand. Do they help with SEO or are they simply ignored by the search engines? I tested several different scenarios, all in Google, and after my research I’ve come to the following conclusions.

Alt attributes seem to be picked up by Google, whether or not there was a link within that element. Some SEO experts have mentioned that if there is no link, then the alt attribute would not be indexed… from my research I’ve found this to be false.

Going further, I noticed in one testing scenario, if there was an image with an alt attribute and a link to a completely other site, that other site was also indexed by Google when searching for the text within the alt attribute. It was difficult for me to verify this multiple times but I definitely verified it in one testing scenario.

I also took this one step further and analyzed my results with what Google Images was displaying. I immediately noticed that Google sometimes takes the alt attribute text and provides this text as the description for the image in Google Images, something that is very valuable to know and understand when doing SEO for your website.

In all of my testing scenarios, the title attribute do not seem to be picked up by Google and adding a link to that element did not seem to affect this result at all. If you really think about it, this makes complete sense. Since you can place title attributes in almost every element of a website, it would be very easy for a user to affect the search engines by keyword stuffing throughout their web pages, something that Google and the other major players do not want, hence why title attributes do not help with SEO.

In my opinion, you should use the title attribute to help with your user’s experience and not with SEO. Since tool-tips provide more useful information to the user about images, links, fields and much more, you will help your users to understand what is happening around the web page.

So from my testing I’ve determined that a title attribute is meant to provide tool-tips to the user for user experience, whereas the alt attribute is helpful in terms of providing alternative information to the user when their browser cannot display an image or input element and helping to increase the SEO of a website. My recommendation is to pay close attention to when, where and how you are using your alt attributes. If they help with SEO, then you should pay close attention to what you are adding.

When adding images always be sure to add an alt attribute to the code of each image. If you do not have one, then just specify a blank one, such as alt=””. Also, be sure to add alternative text that is relevant to that image, the content on that page and be sure not to specify an alt attribute greater than 100 characters in length, as this may be perceived as spamming.

I hope you find my brief overview on the topic of, “Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO?” to be beneficial for you and your business. I’m sure one could dive deep into this topic, spending weeks determining the differences between how Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines handle title and alt attributes with regards to SEO for a website.

I welcome all comments and/or feedback.

At Hudson Horizons, we provide website design, development, content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify your business.

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing and SEO services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be “The New Light for e-Business.” By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

Technorati Tags: alt tag, title tag, SEO,