Professor Paul Samuelson stated the law of diminishing marginal returns is one of the most famous laws in all of Western economic theory. In simplest terms the law of diminishing returns means that you can throw twice as many resources at a problem, but you should not expect to necessarily get twice the results you want. This is one of the central messages of Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing.
Godin begins that book by observing in recent decades consumer oriented businesses have spent more and increasingly more money on mass-market advertising, but with decreasing effectiveness. In part this is explained by the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns. It's not the only factor in play, but it is an important one.
The idea of diminishing marginal returns is especially important for small business owners to consider when contemplating directing scarce resources toward web site optimization. Of course every small business web site owner wants more business, but the ever present questions are, how much does acquiring one more customer cost, and is it worth it?
Showing posts with label optimization - site. Show all posts
Showing posts with label optimization - site. Show all posts
7.24.2010
Site Optimization - using img alt tags
It is a fundamental feature of HTML that images, graphics, and photographs, can be displayed on web pages. The basic HTML tag for inserting an image is <img src="Tom_Fox_photo.jpg" />. This code tells a web browser there is an image to display and where to find it. Additionally, to comply with best practice and accessibility standards, the "alt" parameter for the <img> tag is required.
A properly formatted <img> tag is as follows:
<img alt="Photo of Tom Fox" src="Tom_Fox_photo.jpg" />
The "Photo of Tom Fox" part is the alternate text for the image, and it is useful for the visually impaired who use text to voice rendition software. The use of img alt tags is part of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Of more immediate interest to web masters and internet marketing optimizers, the text contained with the <img> alt tag is indexed by Google along with the more obvious parts of a web page.
Proof of concept:
Question: Does Google index img alt tags?
Answer: Yes, when it wants to.
Test: Plug the following . . .
"Screenshot of Google Toolbar showing a Page Rank of 7/10"
(including quotation marks)
. . .into Google search and see what comes up . . . besides this post.
The following screenshot image of the W3C web page was formatted with ALT tag text that will be used in an additional SEO test, in the next post.Edit HTML
Related posts:
SEO experiments - Google index of exact quotes
Site optimization - additional test of img alt tag text
SEO - img ALT text on Bing and Yahoo! search
Screenshot 1 - 20100724-01
A properly formatted <img> tag is as follows:
<img alt="Photo of Tom Fox" src="Tom_Fox_photo.jpg" />
The "Photo of Tom Fox" part is the alternate text for the image, and it is useful for the visually impaired who use text to voice rendition software. The use of img alt tags is part of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Of more immediate interest to web masters and internet marketing optimizers, the text contained with the <img> alt tag is indexed by Google along with the more obvious parts of a web page.
Proof of concept:
Question: Does Google index img alt tags?
Answer: Yes, when it wants to.
Test: Plug the following . . .
"Screenshot of Google Toolbar showing a Page Rank of 7/10"
(including quotation marks)
. . .into Google search and see what comes up . . . besides this post.
The following screenshot image of the W3C web page was formatted with ALT tag text that will be used in an additional SEO test, in the next post.Edit HTML
Related posts:
Screenshot 1 - 20100724-01
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