If your website/blog uses images, image maps or pictures, you should always make use of the ALT tag. ALT tags are a property of the <img src> tag. It displays alternative text for users who cannot load images or have a problem loading an image. Search engines don’t see images, they read a website, so it’s a good idea to give your images a ALT description. In other words, giving your images alternative descriptions, will give search engines a verbal description of your images.

If your website/blog consits of a large number of images, it is vital to use alternative tags, as with many images, your content will probably be on a minimal side. A good image to always give an alterative tag to is the header image at the top of your website - this is often one of the first things a search engine will view.

The general layout of this tag is as follows:

<IMG SRC="image.ext" ALT="Alternative text in here">

An example would be:

<IMG SRC="header.jpg" ALT="Webtrepreneur Home Page">

The above example would give search engines a great idea of what the website is all above. I would suggest going a little further than my example above, and rather use the alternative tag to describe the website, like so:

<IMG SRC="header.jpg" ALT="Webtrepreneur making money online">

This will allow the search engine to understand your website right from the beginning. For Adsense users, this is a excellent way to get your adverts displaying relative media on a website with a large quantity of images.

When we deal with hyphens and unscores in domain names, we need to have an understanding of what Google does with these two characters. Without the knowledge, we will not be sure how to optimize our websites for search engines - which would prove to do detrimental. Google sees hyphens as dividers in domain names and in the content of a website. Underscores are ignored completely by Google.

In order to prove that hyphens are seen as dividers and that underscores are ignored by Google, a test is required. I spent some time searching online for an example, as I have not had a chance to run a test myself, and wanted to get this article out, after reading a comment by WizardMan.

The filename: wagatukepo-sitynozfau-mazidipole_vukertalet.php was created firstly, and a Google search was performed for these 4 keywords. Google yielded no results for these key words. The site was submitted to Google, and once indexed by Google, another set of searches was performed for these keys words. The results may be seen below:

Results: wagatukepo: 1 Google result sitynozfau: 1 Google result
mazidipole: No Google result vukertalet: No Google result
mazidipole_vukertalet: 1 Google result

With the above results, we can see that Google sees hyphens as dividers in URLs and ignores underscore. The second test required, is to test whether Google sees hyphens as dividers and that underscores are ignored in the content of a website. The second test yielded the following results:

Results: bozaketerp: 1 Google result boujulanbi: 1 Google result
vorismetapalu: No Google result terplamili: No Google result
vorismetapalu_terplamili: 1 google result

Once again we can see that, Google sees hyphens as dividers in the content and the underscores are ignored.

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Getting your site well known, and highly ranked on search engines seems to be the aim of the game these days. Back links and search engine optimization are two of the most concentrated on topics floating around the blogosphere, and between website authors.

Today, I bring you another free advertising medium. Within two minutes, you will have another back link to add to your collection. I talked about Blogvertise not too long ago, and it has proven to be successful in increasing peoples traffic. I have received a good collection of emails from people thanking me for the free service. So, without waiting any longer, let me get onto this fantastic new service.

Tagspage is a great place to get an easy, quick and free back link to your website. There are many advantages for this:

• the tag (for the exclusive type) or the title (for the shared type) links directly to your website. This is great for your Search Engine Optimisation and will improve your ranking with search engines
• high exposure
• high traffic
• affordable and creative advertising

Tagspage offers free and paid for tags, both revolving around the same concept of choosing your tag name, and having it displayed on a board with other tags. The Webtrepreneur decided to use the paid service, as the prices were really cheap, and the traffic to the website is high, and I don’t believe in only ever using free advertising to get traffic. The cost of my tag was R336.00, as I received a discount of R144.00 for doing this review. So, all in all, it would have cost R480.00, which relative to the service offered is virtually nothing. I have already seen an increase in the traffic to this website, and the tag has only been on the website for a couple of days! You can see my tag by clicking here - Big red font on a mustard background saying ‘Web Entrepreneur’.

When purchasing tags on Tagspage, there is a wonderful pricing system, where the price changes on the fly while you choose your colours, words and sizes of the tag. I played around for a good 5 minutes until the look and price suited me.

I am very happy with my purchase, and would suggest that you head on over, and take a look for yourself, even if it is to grab a free tag while it’s still available!

Something I have not mentioned, which does make a difference in gearing your website up to follow a specific niche is certain naming tricks. I have talked about key words, key phrases, titles and various other key elements of a website, all of which are vital with SEO, but when it comes down to the really small bits and pieces, there are a couple other little tricks of the trade.

I recently put a website up, purely for testing a few little concepts, I have been reading about. My results have been fairly good thus far; The website has only been running for two weeks, but I feel that two weeks is long enough for me to share this knowledge based on the yielded results.

Filenames do play a role in focusing a website around a specific niche. For this example, I will once again use a fishing website as my base. Instead of having files named: aboutus.htm, contactus.htm, why not label them: aboutfishing.htm and contactfishing.htm. These names appear in the source code of your website, and search engine spiders do see this. Use the keywords you have chosen to label your .htm/.html/.php files. It’s a simple task to do, and one which does make a difference, well my results show so at least. The second little trick is image files, which follow the same as above - name your images correctly. Let’s say, for example, that I went on a fishing trip, and took some wonderful pictures of the lake I was fishing in, and wanted to post these pictures on my website for my readers to take a look at. I download the photos from my digital camera, and uploaded them immediately. What I will find is that the images are named something along the lines of DSC1902 and DSC1903, and so on. Once again, take your time, and label the images correctly, and along your topic. The image names appear in the source code, and will be read by spiders.

Remember to always use alt and title tags when doing the above as well. Title and Alt tags are so often forgotten about, and they play a magor role in focusing your site around a niche. Here are examples of where you would use these tags:

<a href=”https://webtrepreneur.co.za/aboutwebtrepreneur.php” title=”About Webtrepreneur”>About Webtrepreneur</a>

and

<img src=”WebtrepreneurHeader.jpg” alt=”Webtrepreneur Header”>

I cannot stress how valuable it is to use these two tags when preparing your pages and posts. The website I put up, is a two page site, including everything I have mentioned above. I placed Adsense on the website, and submitted it to a couple search engines. I changed the content daily, followed my click throughs and statistics, and without over exaggerating, my traffic has almost doubling every two days. The Google adverts adapted perfectly to my topic, and the click through percentage increased as the adverts took onto the topic I chose. I have only made $40 in Adsense revenue on the website, but for two weeks, this is certainly not a bad effort at all. That’s almost $3/day for a two week old website, anyone who knows a bit about monetizing a website, will agree that that’s a good effort!

Give these little tricks a go, The Webtrepreneur would love to get some feedback from you, so I know that I am not the only one who has managed to make some extra dollars with a few simple tricks.