My Google video post last week was very popular with readers, so I’ve decided to post a follow up with Google’s latest search marketing video. This week’s video covers using alt tags correctly and how they can help get you more exposure on the web.

Again, for those who can’t view the clip, here is a quick summary below:

Computers are not great at recognizing what an image is and what it contains. Often, the source code for the image doesn’t give much information at all. For example:

<img src=”DSC00042.JPG”>

This doesn’t provide any useful information to Google to try and categorize the image. Instead, Google wants website owners to provide a short description for each image so they can understand which keywords are related to the image.

Matt explains that if the above image was a picture of a cat with some yarn, an alt tag can be used as follows:

<img src=”DSC00042.JPG” alt=”My cat with some yarn”>

He then explains that fewer than 25 keywords are usually enough to describe most images and website owners should use alt tags for all images on their website. It’s very easy to do, helps your accessibility and informs Google what’s contained in your image.