Semantic content: images with alt attributes vs plain text? Part 2

OK so interesting results from our little test case... Although it looks like Google is certainly acting as expected for natural rankings with the way we markup content we've had some interesting results from the other guys at Yahoo & Altavista where it looks as though our mate Roger (un-sematic plain text content) is certainly leading the way!!

Page name	Position
	Google	Yahoo	Altavista	Ask	Live/MSN
Frank (H1: image with alt and title)	3	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Fred (H1: as plain text)	1	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Roger (P: as plain text)	2	2	2	n/a	n/a

I must say - I'm a bit concerned by these results as it certainly doesn't bode well for the way we've been told we "should" code so often!

Watch this space for further updates!! Feel free to drop Jon an email if you want to see more comparisons.

You can see the pages at:
http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/frank.html
(header as image with alt and title attributes)

http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/fred.html
(everything as plain text)

and...
http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/roger.html
("un-semantic" plain text)

Semantic content: images with alt attributes vs plain text?

One of the big arguments I constantly have about SEO is whether semantic content as images (with appropriate alt text) or simple text values will rank differently.

For example - which is better for SEO?

<h1>header</h1>

Or...

<h1><img src="header.gif" alt="header" /></h1>

...And does the H1 tag actually make a difference?

<p>header</p>

Not surprisingly it's an incredibly difficult subject to find any solution for so here at Code Required we're currently running a simple test to see what happens...

You can see the pages at:
http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/frank.html
(header as image with alt and title attributes)

http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/fred.html
(everything as plain text)

and...
http://www.mycardioworld.com/tests/roger.html
("un-semantic" plain text)

We'll be monitoring the situation over the coming weeks on all the major search engines and posting updates here - in the meantime if you would like us to add other versions or have any comments please drop Jon an email.(For example should we do a sIfr version? should we do a version without title attributes on the images? etc).

Page name	Position
	Google	Yahoo	Altavista	Ask	Live/MSN
Frank (H1: image with alt and title)	1	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Fred (H1: as plain text)	2	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Roger (P: as plain text)	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

Royalty free stock images - Introducing Fotolia

One of the things us web development people always struggle with, especially on smaller, low-budget projects, is where to get stock photogrpahy from. Often places like Getty Images or organising a bespoke shoot are simply too expensive for low budget sites so you either have to source your own images, use the client's, often limited back catalogue or the new(ish) era of social networking - community royalty free sites...

Our old favourite used to be istockphoto but, in years gone by they had quite a limited stock - not any more however as they recently relaunched with video and flash animation - they are definately worth a look!

However we've just come across Fotolia. These guys seem to have taken the whole social networking "file-sharing" idea to a completely new level and allow users to make money from their own images by simply uploading them to the Fotolia catalogue... Great I hear you cry - "I can make some dough"... Well yes and if you are looking for an image for a low budget site this site has a rapidly growing portfolio which, being based on the old community upload is likely to get massive... Huge! In the immenent future.

Check 'em out at http://www.fotolia.com/