At 1/8/2007 11:23 AM, Robin @ Xplore.net wrote:
Could someone please clarify for me the best way to markup an image
in a template, take a header image for example. In the interest of
keeping structure from content I have recently been using background
images wherever possible to keep my markup as clean as possible but
I have been reading an article on the importance of the alt text for SEO.
Is there a definitive answer?
I want the best search engine rankings but I also want clean markup.
Background images, not being IMG elements, can't have ALT attributes,
so that part's easy. If you've decided that an image is truly decor
and doesn't need to be a foreground image, it also doesn't need (and
can't have) alt text.
Determining which images are decor and which are truly content can be
difficult at times as there can be lots of grey area. One could
argue that if the image is not necessary to understanding the page
content, it's decor. It helps if you turn images off in your browser
and see if the integrity of the page suffers as a result.
The correct markup will depend on whether you're using HTML or
XHTML. For XHTML it's:
<img src="xxxxxxxxx" alt="xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" />
Other attributes are available; see:
HTML 4.01 Specification
13 Objects, Images, and Applets
13.2 Including an image: the IMG element
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#edef-IMG
Regards,
Paul
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