I have a photo gallery site on which I would like to place keywords for each photo. As this is a gallery site, I don’t want to clutter it up with visible keywords, tags, etc.
I will place things in meta tags where I can, but I’m given to understand that mega tags only go so far and that Google no longer reads keywords in meta tags. I don’t want to put them as an alt in each image tag either, as IE (wrongly) displays that as a tooltip.
I know Google et al frown upon hidden keywords, but I have no nefarious or malicious intent here; this is legitimate, valid and relevant for user experience. I just don’t want to have keywords filling up my gallery site where I want people to see only photos.
If you use appropriate words in the alt attributes why is that “wrong” to show as a “tooltip”?
a) Because it’s annoying and goes against the visual aesthetic I want for this site.
b) The tooltip is supposed to occur on the “title” attribute, not “alt”.
EDIT: oh… just realized, I could just place both and it will display the title, not the alt.
And think about those using screen readers or have images turned off.
This is purely a photo gallery site; that is the sole purpose. If you are blind or have images switched off in your browser, there’s no reason you’d visit the website; ergo, there’s no real reason for me to accommodate screen readers in this instance.
In that case I think the best way would be to give the alt attributes values, and then use javascript to remove them.
That way search bots would still read them but visitors wouldn’t see the mouseover “tooltip”. Those without javascript would still see them, but as the site has a limited target audience that shouldn’t occur that often.
if this is true, then just go ahead and display your keywords right along (beside, under, above) each photo
Did you not read my post?
I don’t want to display them by the photo because they’re annoying and distracting from the photographs people want to see.
if you don’t, then it isn’t “relevant for user experience”
This is double-negative logic and it’s flawed. “User experience” is just that: the experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean displaying every possible piece of information. In this instance, it means displaying only what people want to see, not gobs of keywords and clutter (ie.: this is not Flickr)
and if the keywords are not actually relevant, leave them out
They are relevant. They describe the photograph, and nothing more, so that people can find it externally. People don’t want to see the exact descriptors when they get there, they just want to see the photograph.
you have several choices: place the keywords on the page with exactly the same colour as the background, or place them in some kind of block tag (e.g. div) and then apply css to position the block off the page, or use font size of 1 or 2 pixels so that the words look like ant trails graphic decoration, or …
good luck keeping your site in the search engine indexes
<img src=“pic1.jpg” alt=“Description of picture” title=“”>
Yup, I noticed that, too. Thanks.
you have several choices: place the keywords on the page with exactly the same colour as the background, or place them in some kind of block tag (e.g. div) and then apply css to position the block off the page, or use font size of 1 or 2 pixels so that the words look like ant trails graphic decoration, or …
I’m aware of how to do it and I’m aware that it’s a no-no to search engines.
Yes. Why wouldn’t it? It is an image, with a required alt attribute specified, and an optional title attribute specified (albeit empty). Perfectly legal.
