Simple Tips on How to Optimize Alt Texts,,,,,

One area where web designers and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals usually butt heads is over the use of images as text instead of actual plain text, usually done in the navigation or other important elements,,, of a website. This can cripple an SEO implementation by limiting the effectiveness of elements that could have been textually based, as text is much more effective for interlinking. This is just one area where image alt text can be very useful.

Alt text — which are found in the “alt” portion of image tag — allows you to add a short descriptor of the image, whether it’s a photograph, a navigational element or some other useful image or graphic. Alt text allows you to describe to users who hover their mouse over an image what they’re seeing, but for SEO, Services, it also gives the search engine more information than the image’s file name might. Optimizing image alt text is a part of any effective on-site SEO campaign, and in this article, we’ll give you some tips on how to optimize alt texts to make them more useful and effective.

First, if there is text in your image, make sure your alt text matches it precisely. If it’s a one-word image such as menu item, for example, you would include this word in your alt text, as well as possibly a short description of the menu item. This gives the search engine some idea as to what that element is all about.

Secondly, for pictures and other descriptive images, you want at most a sentence describing what users can see in that picture, and again, it has to match what the picture actually is. Google’s crawlers can’t see images, but humans can, and if one of Google’s engineers see that you’re filling.... your image alt tags with irrelevant information, it could raise red flags.

Finally, not every image has to have an alt text in it. You wouldn’t add alt text to transparent spacer images used to align other elements of a page together, for example, but you would add alt text to all important and relevant images on a page. Alt text doesn’t carry the weight of actual readable text in the eyes of the search engines, but it’s better having it than not.

........25 "Worst Passwords" of 2011 Revealed

If you see your password below, STOP!

Do not finish reading this post and immediately go change your password -- before you forget. You will probably make changes in several places since passwords tend to be reused for multiple accounts.

Here are two lists, the first compiled by SplashData:

1. password

2. 123456

3.12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

6. monkey

7. 1234567

8. letmein

9. trustno1

10. dragon

11. baseball

12. 111111

13. iloveyou

14. master

15. sunshine

16. ashley

17. bailey

18. passw0rd

19. shadow

20. 123123

21. 654321

22. superman

23. qazwsx

24. michael

25. football

Last year, Imperva looked at 32 million passwords stolen from RockYou, a hacked website, and released its own Top 10 "worst" list:

1. 123456

2. 12345

3. 123456789

4. Password

5. iloveyou

6. princess

7. rockyou

8. 1234567

9. 12345678

10. abc123

If you've gotten this far and don't see any of your passwords, that's good news. But, note that complex passwords combining letters and numbers, such as passw0rd (with the "o" replaced by a zero) are starting to get onto the 2011 list. abc123 is a mixed password that showed up on both lists.

Last year, Imperva provided a list of password best practices, created by NASA to help its users protect their rocket science, they include:

It should contain at least eight characters

It should contain a mix of four different types of characters - upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters such as !@#$%^&*,;" If there is only one letter or special character, it should not be either the first or last character in the password.

It should not be a name, a slang word, or any word in the dictionary. It should not include any part of your name or your e-mail address.

Following that advice, of course, means you'll create a password that will be impossible, unless you try a trick credited to security guru Bruce Schneir: Turn a sentence into a password.

For example, "Now I lay me down to sleep" might become nilmDOWN2s, a 10-character password that won't be found in any dictionary.

Can't remember that password? Schneir says it's OK to write it down and put it in your wallet, or better yet keep a hint in your wallet. Just don't also include a list of the sites and services that password works with. Try to use a different password on every service, but if you can't do that, at least develop a set of passwords that you use at different sites.

Someday, we will use authentication schemes, perhaps biometrics, that don't require so much jumping through hoops to protect our data. But, in the meantime, passwords are all most of us have, so they ought to be strong enough to do the job.

Sourse Forbes.com

What To Look For In an SEO Company?

Go to a popular search engine like Google, and search for a keyword relevant to your business and check whether you can find your company in the first page of the search results. If you don't find it there, then how can your customers find you from among those millions of competitors? Here, search engine optimization can help you reach your customers. Social Media Marketing is a web technique which ensures you that you reach your targeted customers who are located in different parts of the world.

In today's competitive world, it is very important that you get a Search Engine Optimization for your website. You can always outsource the same to a trusted and experience search engine optimization Company who can do the work for you. It is not easy to find a good SEO company who gets you the result for what your pay. Some companies make you pay extra claiming that they will bring your website on top of the Google result page and end up in not finding in any search engine at all. Hence, it is essential to understand what to look for in a SEO company before choosing one. Which one of these methods is the most effective when it comes to search engine marketing? Pay Per Click Optimization is a one or the other” technique or is a successful SEM campaign dependent on prudent utilization of both techniques? These questions have been brought to the forefront thanks to a brewing disagreement between parties supporting each side.

Before starting with this, the SEO specialists should visit your company and understand each and every aspect of your business so that they can help your achieve your marketing goals. If you already have a website, they should do a thorough checking of your current website and analyze its performance with regards to your competitor's site, so that they can get you the maximum benefit out of the Search Engine Optimization. Another important point they need to consider is your keyword. They need to develop or find the appropriate keywords for your website in order to attract more traffic to your website. This helps to achieve your online sales target.

Before implementing the optimization plan, they need to show you a test version so that you can see the working and can suggest for any changes if there need to be any. They need to have a proper link building plan as it is a very critical ingredient of SEO which, if done properly, will give you long term results. This is not the end as they need to give you quarterly or monthly reports also on the progress of your Search Engine Optimization. As an addition to this, some search engine optimization companies also give an offer to expand the search engine optimization by adding more keywords based on the day to day changes in the market.

If you find a company or a specialist who gives you the above services, then don't wait; start today!