Image gallery alt tags, for SEO?

Question

I'm designin a web page for an architectural company, which lists its projects, with an image gallery, (not a slider) so all images are on the gallery page, but thumbnails.

I have seen a website (high rank in google) which has done it like that:

<img src='img1.jpg' alt='rent-a-car website designing companies, cityname' />
<img src='img2.jpg' alt='cityname companies that design rent-a-car websites' />
<img src='img3.jpg' alt='city region rent-a-car designing companies' />

kinda spammy but it works I guess.

So should I use the same keywords over and over, or should I seperate the keywords to images, and use more meaning tags? like this:

<img src='img1.jpg' alt='rent-a-car website designing companies' />
<img src='img2.jpg' alt='cityname design companies' />
<img src='img3.jpg' alt='city region website designers' />

which one is better? and why?

Thanks !

Answer 1

Alt tags should be reserved for description purposes for people who are blind or users who have images disabled. You should populate your content that is useful for your audience not just the search engines.

Google has many methods of establishing what a page is about and where it should rank, and its now easier than ever thanks to local seo. Many to most factors of local seo are actually factored off site, so even with adding images that are useless or just an alt tag that is you will reach the threshold, since the threshold is so low even pages with only one mention of a keyword phrase in text with no images can rank top...

Adding unnecessary images or tags dampens the user experience, you should aim for best conversions and work more on your off page local seo via social media, citations, press releases and bait ware.