Using Image Tags to Embed Keywords It can be very difficult to discover ways to add keywords to your website without the content looking and sounding completely stale. The goal is for 2% to 7% of keyword density and while it is not always easy to find ways of using those keywords, there is a technique you may not be aware of using the keyword ALT tag. Placing an image in your HTML code allows the addition an ALT tag. This tag is simply a place in the image to put a description, name or title related to the image. It does not show unless you have a browser that shows ALT tags when you hover over the image with the mouse. You may also see this text when the image is loading. But search engines do see this ALT tag and will index it to help you gain keyword recognition for the website. For increased effectiveness, vary the ALT tag content so it is not just a repetition of the same keyword. It is common to see a company's logo named logo.gif or logo.jpg. This serves no absolutely no benefit to the keyword density of your website. However, if you were to name your logo SEO-Expert.jpg, this name would become part of the search engines indexing when it sees your page. Do not think of keyword density in terms of numbers, think of keywords in terms of “where can I naturally embed the keywords as my viewer reads the content and where can I embed keywords that do not affect the website where it might be considered spamming”. In addition to naming image files using your keywords, try to name your subdirectories and web page files names using keywords. A client of mine in a very competitive real estate market finds excellent positioning for their real estate keywords related to their business location at Lake Tahoe. This is primarily due to one of their subdirectories being named incline-village-real-estate. Too much keyword density will result in being punished by search engines. So when you can distribute your keywords over several locations in your website, you are playing it safe -- and smart. Copyright ©2008 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved. _____________________________ Chesa Keane has been designing and developing web sites with an eye toward search engine optimization and traffic generation since 1995. TAO Consultants offers online web and SEO courses to help you make the most of your web business and investment at the www.computergoddess.com website.