SEOish - Google Gadgets and SEO

An In Depth Guide to Creating Small Websites That Rank Well

pat — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:37:51 +0000

I have made quite a few websites and they tend to do well. It isn’t because I am particularly gifted, it is because of the decisions I make before creating a website.

I do not try (and fail) to make a million zillion dollars on the web.

I do try (and succeed) to make a few hundred dollars a month on websites that are really good and really small (if you make a few of these websites, they add up pretty quick).

The work to money ratio on these types of websites is amazing.

I have sites that make from 1000 to 30,000 dollars a year that only took me a couple of days to create. I never did any link building campaigns for those sites, I never looked at any charts and SEO graphs for those sites, and I never kissed up to anyone or begged for social mentions for those sites. I just made really good websites that were really small. Since I have several such sites, I have a good solid income, I don’t need to have a job and I don’t need to deal with clients.

If that sounds good to you, read on.

I consider 3 key elements while creating a new website because when I consider these elements, I know I can likely make a website in a weekend, have it do well, and get recurring revenue from it. These types of websites also make the web better. I am going to describe at length the process and considerations I use to make web sites. This post will provide actual examples using a website I specifically made for this post which uses the concepts I discuss.

How to Make a Website That Ranks Well Without a Bunch of Links

The first step is to decide what your website is about, here is what I do when I am thinking of creating a new site. I always start with a very important question…

1. Does the web need this website?

The surest path to disappointment on the web is creating a web site that isn’t really needed.

There are millions of things you can make a website about, you need to ask yourself if there is a need for the website you are creating. The websites that tend to do well fill an existing need that is not currently being filled. As you dream up your website, make sure it does not already exist.
The first step in making a great website is to determine if the web site is needed on the web. To make that determination is basically asking yourself if the subject of the proposed website is covered well already in the search engine results.
Probably the best way to find a subject for a successful website is to use your search experience. If you are searching for “odd hats” on Google and all you find is sites that have normal hats, then you know you can make a website about odd hats and have it work and have a good chance of ranking even without a million links.

In contrast, if you search for something on Google and all the results are websites that fufill your search needs, then you probably shouldn’t make a site about that subject.

2. Decide how your website will be better than other websites

If you have decided that the subject of your website is needed, now you have to decide how it will be better than the websites that already exist. This is crucial. Prior to getting a domain name, decide how your website will be superior. To use the “odd hats” example again, if you made a website about odd hats, one of the main ways you could be better is by only highlighting odd, unique hats.

Even if there are a million websites out there on a subject, they may not be filling a need well.

Example: I always search for CSS code to move an image to the left or right, I always forget it and always end up searching for it again. I noticed something very strange when I did.

The top results for image related CSS information often did not have an image in it. There are no visual cues on the pages. I often found myself reading through very verbose explanations when all I really need was a tiny bit of code.

This to most would seem a minor frustration, but to me it was a web site in the making, particularly because there isn’t a website out there that only discusses image related CSS.

I knew if I made a website that was only about image CSS, was very visual, to the point, and simple, it would probably rank well even in an area as crowded as CSS sites. It probably wouldn’t need to get alot of links to start getting traffic.

If you search for “float images left” on Google, nine of the top 10 results do not even have an image on them to display the concept of what it is they are explaining. Articles about image CSS techniques should have images. This could be done better.

3. Only Make Websites That You Can Finish Quickly

One common mistake is to make a website with a subject so broad that it gets bigger and bigger and takes forever to finish and maintain.

Being more comprehensive is a wonderful way to have a better website than someone else. However, you must realize that in the spirit of “making really good websites that are really small” you should not choose a subject that takes more then 10 or 20 pages to be comprehensive. If you can not be a comprehensive resource about a subject in a few amount of pages, you have not found the right subject yet.

There is real wisdom in creating concise laser focused websites that solve a certain problem. This is what “niche” is all about. Niche web sites are talked about all the time, but not many people talk about what a niche site really is.

How do you know if a subject is niche? I do not know how other people decide but here is what I think…

If you can not make a comprehensive website in a weekend about a subject, that subject is not niche.

Understand that well. It is very important.

With my CSS frustration I outlined above, I knew that I could make a website that took care of all of my frustrations and it could likely be less than ten pages.

So I made decided to make a website that would take care of all the gripes I had about the subject and use it as a real example for this post.

Here is the website that I made for this post. It is about… image CSS.

Here are the things I did to make that site and why I did them…

What I did step by step

1. I determined a website was indeed needed about image CSS
The 3 biggest deciding factors I used to make this decision were:

I had a problem finding what I wanted in Google when searching for image CSS subjects.
There was no website specifically about image CSS
Image CSS is a no brainer when it came to traffic. Virtually everyone creating web content, no matter their skill level, will at some point wonder about CSS and images. I did not use tools or charts to determine this, I used my common sense.

2. I decided how my website would be better than other websites… Specifically, I looked at the problems I noticed:

There was no website that was only about image CSS
There were no (or very few) web results that quickly and concisely gave me the information I needed.
There were no images in posts about image CSS techniques, which I found incredibly weird.
There were not visually simple and pleasant websites about this subject.
Many of the results I found were overly verbose, and spoke with complicated terms rather than simple terms.

Having seen these problems, I knew that I could be better than those results because…

My website will only be about image CSS
My website will have pages that quickly gave the user the information they want
My website will have visual examples of the techniques using images.
My website will scream simplicity
My website will focus only on providing solutions, not history of problems.

3. Get a domain name.

Now that I know how my website will be better, I can look for a domain name.

Amazingly, I found a rather good one…

imagecss.com

That is a good domain name for a website about Image CSS huh? I lucked out on that one. Ten bucks well spent.

4. I need to think about how it will look visually.

I want it to scream simple. I want it to be clear within an instant what the site is about. I want to use images that are friendly. I want it to be visual , visual, visual. This would mean I need to spend some money on images, but whenever I spend money, I want to do it effectively. I decided I would spend about 100/200 dollars on images so the site would look good.

Since this would be a visual website I decided I need to find and use images that were friendly, cute, simple. I used istockphoto.com to find images. Here are some tips when looking for images to use on your new sites…

Understand that your images need to tie together in a theme. You are not looking for one perfect image, you are looking for a suite of images that work together. This is important so that you site “fits together” well.
Drawings are less used on the web because they cost more than photos do. Consider this when making your visual decisions. Your website can often look more original if you use stock drawings instead of stock photos.

Knowing these two things, I went to istockphoto.com and searched around…

When I did a search I searched for “cute friendly”…

I then unchecked all of the choices except for “illustrations”…

I browsed through the results and came across an image I liked. Once you find something you like, it is well worth the time to make sure that the artist has other things you like so that you can used the same “look” throughout your site. To do this choose “view portfolio”…

Okay when I did that there were lots of similiar drawings. I had found an image I liked, with a look I liked, and made sure that there were many options available from the same artist.

5. I need to make a good header.

I found an image from the artist I liked that was simple and friendly and that I thought would be a good logo of sorts…

I then got a pen and some paper (cause I’m fancy like that).

I sketched out a design that I thought would be kinda cool using that image as part of the header.

Once I decided it would look nice, I bought the image.

You can also download a copy of the image and use that in your experiments.

I am cheap. I do not want to pay for an image I do not want. Testing is good.

Here is the header I eventually made…

With this header I accomplished a few of my goals (remember one of my gripes was that “there was not a website only about image CSS”).

It is simple and friendly (one of my gripes was that “There were not visually simple and pleasant websites about this subject”).

It is clear what the site is about without even seeing any content, nobody who ends up on this website will be confused if they have found the right place or not. A good website header will let the user know instantly what the site is about.

The tag line is concise and a little bit humorous (non technical and simple).

6. I need to make a good homepage.

I have a domain, I have a header, now I need to figure out what the site should include and how it will be presented. The home page is important, and should illustrate quickly to someone what the site is about.

The information I want to provide is image CSS related stuff. The most common issues I had were how to move an image left, right, center, etc. I decided all this type of info should be quickly and plainly addressed.

I wanted a visual homepage that clearly showed what information you could find at this site. Under the friendly header, I decided to make this for the home content…

The home page has six boxes that cover the main ways an image can be placed in a web page or blog: left, right, center (horizontal), center (vertical), top, and bottom. This solved my gripe that “There were no (or very few) web results that quickly and concisely gave me the information I needed.”

Each box has a visual example of what technique I am describing (remember that my biggest gripe was that there were no visual examples of techniques on other sites. I am better!).

The friendly theme of the header is continued. In the side bar it says a blurb about how the site covers simple and easy ways to do things with images using CSS. It is friendly, simple and provides visual indications of the techniques that are described.

7. I need to decide the hierarchy of the site.

The great thing about small websites is that they have simple hierarchies. You know that advice about “every page should be able to found in two clicks”?. When you have a small site that is easy to accomplish. In fact, every page of my website is linked to from the homepage.

That being said, it is still good to have a list of your pages, and a general idea of how they will fit together. I decided that the home page would be the main navigation of the site (sorta like a “sitemap”) because each page of my site is linked to from it.

My site has a grand total of 11 pages and describes the subject pretty well, pretty throughly, and pretty simple like.

I did not choose to look at keyword research for what my subjects would be, but many people do. I instead just covered what I felt were useful. Because the total of pages is so small, all the pages can be linked to about evenly.

8. Create the information pages

I have a great domain, a great header and a great homepage, now I need to have great content. The content must to fulfill the needs of people searching for image CSS terms.

Each page should describe quickly and visually the concept. It should have a clear title and describe off the bat what the page is about.

I also decided to have a short concise description of each technique at the top, and then a more thougrough and in depth explanation below. This way if people knew what they wanted, but just couldn’t remeber the code (like me) they could grab it quick. If a person need more info, they could just scroll down and get it…

Below the fold there is a much more in depth explanation of the technique and how to accomplish it.

I made the articles as good and simple as I could. I made one for each technique (left, right, center, etc.). I also decided to create content that helped people understand things like background images, image opacity, and the image tag. I did not go crazy. The only thing the website discusses is image CSS.

Things like “padding”, “margin”, and “border” can be hard to explain or understand, but it can be visually explained in an image quite quickly with the CSS box…

I made the best content I could, I chose my subjects and stuck to them.

I now have a good website. Now what?

SEO stuff:
I do not do much as far a as SEO goes, here is what I do…

Choose “www” or “non www”. Make a choice, and the do the 301 redirect to the version you decide.
Make sure that a search engine spider can see the site using a spider simulator.
Add it to Google webmaster tools

Okay, that is the SEO I do. Pretty involved, huh? In the beginning, this is really all I do as far as SEO goes.

Link Building
I do not do much on the link building front either.
I tweeted about the site yesterday. Today I am linking to it in this post. I also put it on Stumbleupon.
That is all I will do for the first few weeks. Three links is good for now
If that surprises you or you feel that is too little effort, you might just be surprised. We will revisit this site in a couple weeks and I will do another post about tweaking, monetizing, and more link stuff if necessary.

Monetize it:

For the first month or so, I do not put any money stuff on my sites. I sometimes end up getting emails from people wanting to advertise. If I do not, I will probably put Adsense on there, again we will revisit this in a few weeks.

The important part

This post is like 3000 or more words long. I spent around 2800 of those words describing the things to do before you make a website. The thing to spend time on is the decisions you make before making a website and knowing how it will be better than others and how it will fill the needs of searchers.

GetListed.org Local University – Minneapolis

pat — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:36:54 +0000

I will be conducting a workshop at the Getlisted Local University in Minneapolis where local business owners can get answers from me about their specific businesses.
During the sessions and/or after the morning session I will be helping business owners take the first steps to implementing solid best practices for their business.

I want to thank our event sponsors Google, Bing, ReliaCloud, and Deluxe for their support.

Google representatives Ryan Hayward and Ari Bezman will be there. Mikko Ollila, senior product manager for Bing, as well as industry leaders like Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, David Mihm, Mary Bowling, and Ed Reese will be speaking there too.

Aaron Weiche of Five Technology is spearheading the logistics for this one as well as speaking, so a big thank you to him.

Our Minneapolis event on May 13th will be larger than our first Local University we did in Spokane. I do advise, however, for you to get your tickets early (even though this event is two months away, people are already buying their tickets).

To get details, please see: GetListed Local University – Minneapolis

Here is some coverage of our last event:

Image SEO Tool Improved!

pat — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:01:12 +0000

I have added more functionality to the image SEO tool.

The tool now checks, displays and warns about two other ALT attributes.

Dimensions (height / width) are specifically mentioned by the Google image guidelines. Of dimensions they state:

“Specify a width and height for all images.”

So the tool now displays the width and height if it is there, and if it is not there it displays a warning.

I also now have the tool look for a “title” attribute. If one is there, the tool will display it, and if not, it will display a warning.

Give it a look: Image SEO Tool

Here is a screen shot:

New Google Guideline Tool

pat — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:03:40 +0000

The Google webmaster guidelines recommend that you support the “If Modified Since” HTTP header.

It wasn’t easy for most people to figure out if they supported it or not.

I wanted a tool for my webmaster tools page that simply answered the question…

“Does my website support If Modified Since?”

Here it is… If Modified Since HTTP header tool

A screen shot of the tool:

Does your web page support if modified since as recommended by the Google webmaster guidelines? Find out here.

Get Ranked Higher by Being Better

pat — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:01:23 +0000

The real way to rank higher in search engines is to be better than your competitors.

- Great websites have very little need to build links because they naturally attract links.

Great websites are linked to naturally, and rank naturally even without links. I know you all do not want to believe that, but it is true. There are terms like “link building efforts” which I would compare to “pushing a giant boulder up a hill efforts”.
You can push a giant boulder up a hill through effort, but it is always going to try to go back where it naturally belongs.

Link building is exactly the same thing.

Your website will end up at about where it belongs eventually so your time is better spent by making a better website than it is to build links and such because if you have a better site it will rank better.

There are two main possibilities here. You are working on your own websites or you are working on someone else websites.

If you are working on things you have control of, this post is for you.
If you are working on something you do not have control of, it sucks to be you, and you may want to keep reading this post and make stuff you have control of so you don’t have to work on things you do not control anymore.

The definition of “better” is not determined by you, it is determined by the people using your website. If people are not linking to your site, it is not because they are stupid, it is because they see no reason to link to it.

A great website gives people reasons to link to it.

Being better than your competitors requires that your website is one or some of these types of things in comparison to your competitors…

more simple
more comprehensive
more funny
solves problems quicker
more visually stunning

There are many ways to be better, but it all comes down to one thing…

If you are having problems getting links, your website is not as good as it can be yet.

Your link building techniques are not what needs tweaking. Your website does.

Allow that possibility to enter your head as you consider your rankings.

If you wake up each day thinking about how to get more links to your existing websites then it is very likely your existing websites are not as good as they can be.
No matter how much you spend on link building and SEO efforts, you can not make an inferior site superior.
Your web site has to pleasure people.
That pleasure may come by having a better solution, or it may come because you have a faster service, or it may come because your cat photos are cuter than someone else’s cat photos. However the pleasure comes, come it must for your website to succeed.

Successful people do things. Unsuccessful people complain and make excuses. Here are some common excuses and their solutions.

Excuse:

“My website is in a field where I have to link build because it is what everybody else does”

Solutions:

1. Leave that field and enter one that you can dominate.

2. Stay in your current field and stop crying. It is utter bullshit to say that there is no way to be more innovative in your field.

If you are saying that you can not be more innovative, then cut your losses. Move on, you are not the type of person that can succeed in your current field.

At some point you need to decide if you want to try to make a million dollars on the web and make nothing or try to make a thousand dollars on the web and make a thousand. (hint: making 1000 dollars on the web yields you more money than making 0 dollars does).

Excuse:

“My website is already the best it can be.”

Solutions:

Understand that it is not. It may be exactly what you envisioned, it might be precisely what you deem as the perfect website, but it is not what other people deem to be linkable.

This means you can be proud of what you made and keep it exactly the same or you can change it. The ups and down of these options are basically that if you do not change anything, your results will likely not change either. If you change something, your results will change (the whole Newton lawy thingie about: “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”)

Excuse:

“I am not succeeding because I am not popular or someone else is bringing me down.”

Solutions:

This is simply not the case. It may seem like it at times, but it is not the truth. This is the internet and in this fabulous arena it matters not what your race is or your gender is or if you are popular or not.

On the internet you “become popular” by having great ideas and executing those ideas well.

You do not need to “know someone” to be successful on the web, the only person you need to know on the internet is you.

The way to rank your website higher is to make your website better.

“If I Can Dream” – High Stakes Social Media

pat — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:07:27 +0000

“American Idol” co-creator Simon Fuller’s next show will not air on TV. It will only exist on the web. Pepsi, Ford, MySpace, Hulu, and Clear Channel are all in on it too.

If I Can Dream

The show is called “If I can Dream” and is touted to be..

Tailor-made for this generation.
It’s entertainment for the social networking set —
unfiltered and unvarnished.
Using the most popular social networking tools,
a global audience can interact with our aspiring artists
as they chase their dreams.
Essentially, everyone is part of this exciting journey.

Right beneath this blurb in their press kit are the logos of several social media sites… MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

What is the show about?
The show will follow five really good looking young people chasing their dreams in Hollywood. Big Brother style, the house in the Hollywood hills where they are to live will be full of cameras that will be on 24/7.

So we get it will have viewers, but how is it social?

IfIcanDream.com – This is where there show will air 24 / 7 the press release says…

If I Can Dream allows viewers to interact with the narrative in real time and offers open access to an entertainment experience in a way that has not been attempted before.

That doesn’t tell us much, but here is a screen shot of a camera preview…

There is a social ticker thing in the bottom that says things like “Amanda just uploaded this, and Giglianne just tweeted that”.

MySpace – Auditions for this show are now being accepted on MySpace (even though there is a current cast, it will change as the show goes on.)

Clear Channel – Here is what they say they are doing…

Clear Channel’s local radio personalities and audience
interaction will spur daily conversations, and through Clear
Channel’s content creation and distribution platform, the
If I Can Dream stories will come to life on-air, online, and
on mobile devices.

Hmmm, mobile.

Hulu – Hulu will be streaming a weekly show that will be more of a “normal” version of the show. What is notable about this however is that this show will be streamed world wide, which Hulu has not done before. For many countries this will be their first view of Hulu. The cast of the show has gone to Sydney, Tokyo, Taipei, Rio, etc. promoting the show. The American promotion starts soon – Hulu has started to air ads about the shows cast.

Facebook – I really do not see anything special right now (just some fan pages). They are specifically mentioned in the press stuff, but if there is an interactive Facebook page, it hasn’t been revealed yet.

Long story short, this is a very high profile “social experiment” (as they put it). It will be interesting to see how effectively they can do this.

It seems that the “social” of this show will mostly be the voting and the heavy use of familiar social platforms.

The main pages are:

How to Remove Clones of your Google Gadget from the Directory

pat — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:52:16 +0000

Google has taken some steps that help you keep you claim your Google gadgets and allow you to remove gadgets that are claiming to be you or your brand, but are not.

This happened often, and made the google gadget directory look strange as shown in the screen shot.
There were over 100 “clones” of my gadgets in the directory alone. This is where someone has copy and pasted your code in it’s entirety and then submitted to the Google gadget directory.

When several people do this it causes many repetitive (spam) gadgets to be returned when someone is searching for a gadget in the directory.

How to remove clones of your Google gadget

iGoogle has a feature called Google gadget dashboard where you can claim your gadgets. This feature allows you to claim any gadget that is associated with emails that are yours. Once you claim all the gadgets associated with your email, you will have the ability to remove gadgets from the Google gadget directory. If there are clones of your gadget (someone pretending to be you) then you can now remove them.

1. To access your dashboard and claim your gadgets go here.

2. Follow the steps (this is basically an email verification process).

3. Claim one of your gadgets. When you do this, it will actually show you all the other gadgets associated with that email address and ask you if you want to claim those too. Claim them all.

Now you have a dashboard and all of it’s neat tools like stats of users worldwide and page views and graphs and such…

5. Now that your dashboard is set up, you will notice that some of the gadgets listed are clones. This can be seen rather easily as shown by this screenshot of part of my dash board….

I remember making that gadget once, but here are like ten different versions of it! These are clones, but now they are my clones and I have the power to remove them!

6. For each gadget clone go to right hand side and click “remove from directory” link.

7. You will now be prompted to go through another email verification process.

8. Once you verify, you will receive a message in your dashboard stating that the gadget will be removed from the directory within 48 hours.

This is a bit of a process, but understandable.

After you are through, you have just made the Google gadget directory a little bit less of a spam cess pool, and your name and email are not associated with spam gadgets anymore.

Is Paper Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic?

pat — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:34:42 +0000

This as a parody of a Micheal Grey post…

This is my video response to Micheal Grey’s post “Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic“.

He basically says that Google is evil and bad for providing free information about local businesses on the web.

This is a parody of that post. I feel his post is dumb as poo. So let me explain to you…

How Paper is is stealing your content and hijacking your traffic

Update: Micheal responded to my video with a video of his own. Here it is…

A Vic-20 Love Story

pat — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:51:11 +0000

The first computer I ever used was called the Vic-20.

This was before the internet existed in any real sense that would be recognizable today.

To telephone someone you used a rotary dial.

To drink a soda (like a Tab or a Shasta) you had to first peel off the pop tab.

To play music you had to put a needle on a spinning disc.

Things were different then.

I lived in a group home at the time, one day I met this girl at school and I started walking her home. I, clad in tube socks and cut-offs, would even carry her violin.

The girl I would walk home had a Vic-20 computer.

I liked her…

Vic-20.

I would go to her house everyday and we would talk for hours, if “talking for hours” means “I used her Vic-20 while she read Jack London novels”.

She had “Mole Attack” and “SeaWolf”.

Her father had what could only be described as an insane amount of reference books for computing. I read them all.

To set up a Vic-20 required a screwdriver.

You hooked it up to the UHF screws on the back of your TV. There was a switch and with that switch you could go from TV to Computer land.

Computer land was a nice place for me, the boys in my group home could be mean at times. Let’s just say they didn’t know what an infinite loop was.

The more time I could spend with her…

Vic-20, the better.

She would kiss me sometimes beneath her Benji poster, but I figured this was a small price to pay for computer time (ends up I was wrong about that – women are only attractive to me now if they wear frumpy sweaters and thick glasses).

When you flipped that switch from TV to Computer, you saw a display that would wow anyone…

Are you ready to enter a dream world of magic?

I was amazed by what I could make occur. For example, if I wanted to have the word “hello” show up on the computer screen, all I had to do was program this…

10 PRINT “{SHIFT+CLRSCRN}”
20 PRINT “HELLO”
30 END

Like magic, the word “hello” would appear on the screen, because I, Godlike, had decreed it to be.

Things were so simple, If I wanted to move the cursor all I had to do was use the cursor keys…

You could do anything!

I remember when her Dad told me he had bought something I would like. He had a smile on his face.
I was kinda nervous until he revealed what he had bought…

What am I, a king?

Who on earth could use so much memory?

Okay, back to modern life… I recently saw an ad for a Vic 20 from 1982 and I would like to highlight the selling features of the Vic 20. The ad listed 26 reasons to buy a Vic-20.

Including…

Reason No. 2…

25 K, baby. What you gonna say bout that?

Reason No.3…

This monster can go up to 27 and 1/2 k Ram.

Reason No.11…

This one is a crazy cool…

U to the L. This puppy has the ability to show both upper and lower case letters.

Want some Specs?

That aint all…

This thing roars like a lion

I just turned 40 years old.
I am very happy I met that girl.
She had a lovely Vic-20, and a name.

I don’t remember her name, but her Vic-20 rocked.

People are even still buying and selling these on Ebay!

Need a thirty year old computer to relive your childhood? Here are Vic-20 items on Ebay right now (hilarious, and how my walk down memory lane started in the first place)…

New Image SEO Tool

pat — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:41:45 +0000

This new tool checks images and alt text on a web page to see how well it can be “seen” by search engines.

One Google guidelines states…

Make sure that your title elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

My new free image SEO tool lets a user enter a url and check how well images are following the image ALT part of this guideline.

Image SEO Tool

Once you enter a webpage and click “go” this tool will…

Show the images of that page.
Display the ALT text associated with each image.
Notes for each image about how well it is following Google guidelines.

Here is what the tool results looks like…

To check your web page images go to the Image SEO Tool.

How are scores assigned? / How does it know how well the guideline is being followed?
I have seen some tools that tell you if an image has ALT text or not, but I have never encountered a tool that examined the ALT text itself.

So I built this tool which does.

This tools not only sees if ALT text is present, it also examines the ALT text and counts the amount of words contained in that ALT text.

I thought about it, and the amount of words does tell us alot.

Scores are based on the amount of words contained in the ALT text. Here are some examples:

If an image has no ALT text (o words) then the image is not following the guideline.
If an image has 100 words in the ALT text it is likely spamming or keyword stuffing
If an image has only one word it is likely not “descriptive”. The Google guideline states it should be descriptive.

I am creating free SEO tools which help a webmaster determine if they are following the Google webmaster guidelines. This and other new (and old) SEO tools having to do with Google will be on my webmaster tools page on feedthebot.com, so you might want to check that page every once in awhile.

Update: Some people reported bugs, they have been fixed. Specifically:
-some cases where images were being reported as having alt text when they did not was fixed (this was happening when people used alt=”" )
-dashes and characters are no longer counted as a word (in fact one letter words are not being counted either)
- I changed some of the conditions so that it is more acceptable to show more words (I went up to 15 words before giving a red “x” and saying “could be seen as spam”)