Table cell background image

They have: 330 posts

Joined: Apr 2000

In an article at seochat.com I read that the top image on your site should be a table cell with a background image of your logo. It says to set the alt text of that image to the search phrase you are attempting to target. How do I set the alt text for a background image of a table cell?

demonhale's picture

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Demonhale

best to put search keywords inside META Tags though...

chrishirst's picture

He has: 379 posts

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And another search engine myth is born !!!

Busy's picture

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Joined: May 2001

I think it should read: the top image on your site should be your logo with alt tag, possibly place in a table (or standalone or via CSS).

Tables can have titles and summarys but not alt tags. Search do not reference title or summary tags.

Is bad advice putting logo as background for many reasons, one is printing (backgrounds are mostly off by default), so unless it prints out the web address or you have your name elsewhere no one will know where they printed it from.

chrishirst's picture

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Joined: Apr 2005

alt attribute
Laughing out loud

They have: 330 posts

Joined: Apr 2000

Quote:
The very top of your body has your Web page graphic set as the background of a cell. The alt text is set only to the key word/phrase on which you are focusing (in our case, "Dog Training").

This is the text from the article. In the article the word background is set to italics.

The article is "How to Steal to the Top of Google, part 1". I have attached a link incase anyone wants to discuss any other problems they might have listed.

http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/How-to-Steal-to-the-Top-of-Google-part-1/

Roo's picture

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Okay, but you should be setting table cell background images in css and calling them via td class= What is the date of the article you read? Is it old? Is the person who wrote it coding to standards?

Personally, I've never heard of including alt with images used *table cell backgrounds* even when it was common back in html 4.0.

To say that your logo *should* be a table cell background is just totally wrong. That's the most rediculoous thing I've heard in a long time.

Roo

chrishirst's picture

He has: 379 posts

Joined: Apr 2005

just the usual formula crap from the usual suspects.

Following this kind of algo chasing stuff is why there is a sudden rush of threads at places like SEOChat, WMW, SEW etc asking "why has my site disappeared now Google have updated" every time there is an update.

Build a site for visitors using correct page structure and markup. It takes a little longer for results to show, but the site won't disappear every few weeks then you have to mess about with the latest and greatest "secret" to Google rankings.

Chris

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They have: 330 posts

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article is dated 4/19/05.

So is there a standard "best" way to optimize a website for the search engines?

They have: 330 posts

Joined: Apr 2000

I posted that last message before I saw the one from chris. I know his formula is pretty simple. Does anyone else have a guideline they use for optimization?

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