ALT or Ault? Alt Attributes Are As Important As Doug Ault

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If you follow @logicalmix on Twitter, you already know Logical Mix is a big fan of the Toronto Blue Jays. There was no way to avoid the SEO pun that is alt…Doug Ault.

Doug Ault hit the first home run in Toronto Blue Jays history way back in 1977, but I bet you couldn’t pick him out of this grainy 1978 team photo. Frustrating right? Think of an individual with low vision on a daily basis having to deal without being able to see the image being shown. You can hit the first SEO home run for your company and be seen (unlike Blue Jays in the team photo), by providing incredible accessibility for those with visual disadvantages at the same time.

ALT image text or ALT tags or more accurately: alt attributes allow those with a visual impairment to understand an image.

Joost de Valk is the founder and CEO of Yoast and says, “the alt tag is used by screen readers, the browsers used by blind and visually impaired people, to tell them what is on the image. The title attribute is shown as a tooltip when you hover over the element…”

Always remember, screen readers will be used for your website. Build your website to accommodate the blind. This is a win-win for all parties involved.

The beauty of helping create a more accessible website for people with blindness or low vision is getting the benefits of search engine optimization as well. As time goes on, it will become more common practice to properly label images (as it should be already).

Be a responsible web developer and design your websites with proper alt attributes. All you ever have to remember to say to yourself when publishing an image, “if I was blind, how would I want that image to read?”

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SOME TAGS NEEDED FOR SEO

On-Page search engine optimization (SEO) is certainly an important part of the website building process. If you want to show up on the first page of any search engine’s search results, on-page SEO is a must. Logical Mix outlines the 3 most crucial elements needed to improve your on-page search engine optimization.
1) Title Tags: Can also be called ‘title elements’. The title tag is the text used to define an online document or the website page. Other than the relevant content on a web page, the title tag is the most important component to on-page search engine optimization.
2) Meta Description Tags: This is where your description is shown when getting search engine results. Your website’s content will be described exactly how you want the reader to interpret it on the search engine results page of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. This is created on the back-end of your website using the HTML tags properly. Ask your developer to code this accurately to your specifications.
3) Alt Image Tags:  Alt Image Tags allow search engines to understand the attributes of an image by describing them in text form. Search engine robots/spiders have a hard time crawling images for SEO purposes without text on them. Another advantage to Alt Image Tags is if the picture doesn’t load on a website, at least there will be a description of what image should be shown. Again, these tags should be applied by whoever is building your website (whether it is you or a developer).
Two extra things to mention are using ‘Header Tags’ (accurate descriptions to summarize the content on a web page) properly and applying proper ‘descriptions/ file names to the images’ you will be displaying on your website. For example, PICTURE-DESCRIPTION.jpeg or PICTURE-DESCRIPTION.gif.
We hope this helps with your internet marketing efforts now and in the future.
Please write us or post if you want to discuss more.
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Blog About Needed Content

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When blogging, you want to be the expert in your field. Own it!

Create content people are looking for or have a need for. If you are missing quality content to write about…avoid writing altogether and repost other peoples interesting articles.

Try searching your topics before writing. If they are already saturated with blogs, maybe rethink another strategy.

People want to be entertained and/or educated. Sometimes both. Get outside of the box if you have to.

Even though we should be taking our own advice. Blog on a schedule. Once per week, bi-weekly, per month, etc.

Write about relevant content.

Blogging can be done anywhere you want. This blog was written in the woods after working remotely around Ontario.

Remember…

Be the expert in your field!

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NEW YEAR’S EVALUATION

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Another new year is upon us. It’s the perfect time of year to reevaluate your company’s goals and marketing efforts. You should be looking introspectively at your company’s results through marketing and make changes accordingly.

Questions to ask yourself:
1) Are we meeting or have we met the sales goal we set at the beginning of the year?
2) Are we on the first page on major search engines (For keywords & key phrases relevant to our business)?
3) How can we improve our overall exposure to potential clients or prospects?

The Answers:
1) If you said “yes” to meeting your goals, keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t mess up a good thing. You may want to add to your current efforts, but certainly don’t let them interfere with what is working.
If your answer was “no”, you need to ramp up your activity to drive new business for your organization. Let’s assume you’re happy with your sales staff (if not, it’s time to increase training or let them go), here are some tips to help increase sales:
Do a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign: Drive traffic to your website. Create landing pages to aid in improving search optimization and watch the leads role in for your sales team.
Create a New Website or edit old Website: Make sure it looks professional and has the right “call to action”.
Search Engine Optimize: More on this in the 2) section. Create an Email Campaign or Direct Mail campaign: These are older methods to drive leads for your business, but can sometimes work wonders.

2) With regards to getting your company’s website on the first page of Google, Bing and/or Yahoo, write down a list of 10 key words or key phrases you want your company to show up for. Think like your prospects would think for this list. Write down a list of 10 (or the relevant number) geographic locations you want to be found in, if applicable. Take those lists to an internet marketing expert who can get you to the top of those pages desired (wink, wink, Logical Mix). Items to make sure are accurate on your website are: Title Tags, Alt Image Tags, Relevant Text and the Meta Description to name a few.

3) In the case of not seeming redundant, do all of the the above and you will be well on your way to improving your overall exposure to potential clients or prospects. Take it seriously, your business depends on it.

Enjoy the holiday season, recharge the batteries and always be thinking of strategies to grow your company (because, we are).

Wishing your organization a prosperous 2015!

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Smart Phone Compatible Website

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With the amount of smartphones being used these days, your business website better be compatible with smartphones or else you’re losing out. Google claims there are over 500,000 Android phones being activated on a daily basis.

The problem with websites that are not formatted for mobile phones are the usability factor and graphics. They are not what will keep a potential customer on your website. The graphics may be too large to fit on a smaller screen and will cause a person visiting your website to quickly become frustrated, and quickly leave your website. A website not properly formatted for smartphone use will be hard to navigate as well. The amount of traffic being generated via smartphones makes it worth the premium to have your website mobile compatible. Too many companies don’t value mobile compatible websites and it’s the perfect time to propel yourself above the competition, while they’re sleeping on a vastly growing technology. Because they will eventually understand the power of the smartphone.

According to Forbes, global mobile traffic now represents around 13% of internet traffic and in 2009 global traffic was only 1%. Those figures are most likely higher in North America too. If this doesn’t wake you up and let you know where the internet traffic is trending towards…nothing will. Be smart about your marketing your business and create a website that is both beautiful and user friendly on a smartphone.

Another statistic according to Forbes is that there are 1 billion  smartphone users in the world today. If only 0.1% of these users go to your smartphone compatible website, you will most likely be a very happy company. Thinking about catering to the smartphone market helps increase your positive internet exposure as well and you always want positive internet exposure.

If you think you can escape going mobile with your company, to quote Donald Byrd “you better think twice”.

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