How important are alt image tags?

I recently visited a website that claims to check SEO rating by looking at your index page and then giving you a score (certain percent of 100) My site scored around 89% and one of the suggestions the site made regarding my site was to make sure all images have alt tags. It listed 80 images on my home page and only 45 with alt tags. At first I was confused - 80 images?? But then I realized it was counting the post icons on the thread lists as images too. Well, those icons do not have alt text attached.

So, my questions:

A. Is it important to have alt image tags on all images for SEO?

B. How do I add alt tags to the icons in vBulletin?

Cheers,
BD

for SEO, not really important.
for accesibility, highly important.

you don't want to market "new thread.gif", you want to market your niche keywords.

Originally Posted by briansol

for SEO, not really important.
for accesibility, highly important.

you don't want to market "new thread.gif", you want to market your niche keywords.

Thanks for your help!

Okay, so then my second question: Where do I add alt tags to those icons?

Cheers,
BD

edit the proper template.

I get a lot of referrals from Google Image Search soooo..... I always alt tags

sure, content images.

but stuff like the reply icon and new thread.... its useless for seo, image search, and the likes. it's an accesibility issue only

Originally Posted by briansol

edit the proper template.

Okay, I have had a good look and cannot find the 'proper template' to edit. Maybe I am looking for the wrong text? I am looking for any reference to icon1.gif.

What is the correct template to edit?

Thanks,
BD

look in forum home postbit level _X

Originally Posted by briansol

look in forum home postbit level _X

I will try that. Thanks so much!

Cheers,
BD

Alt has almost nothing to do with seo, and you shouldn't use keywords for seo either. Maybe if you use keywords in the alt tag your image might end up higher in the google image search ranking, but who cares about that really? If you're not carefull you might even get punished for that.

Alt is only important in terms of accessibility, meaning that alt should describe the image as briefly but accurately as possible.

This is NOT good practice:

<img src="http://www.vbseo.com/images/buttons/reply.gif" alt="SEO search engine optimization vbulletin plugin" border="0" height="26" width="110" />

However, you could use a relevant replacement there (i haven't tried it though). So it would look like this:

<img src="http://www.vbseo.com/images/buttons/reply.gif" alt="Reply to post: How important are alt image tags?" border="0" height="26" width="110" />

This describes the function of the image and is good practice when the image is a hyperlink.

here's some more info: Alt Text: Describing Your Images and Web Usabilty and Web Accessibility

Thanks, that link had very helpful information.

Cheers,
BD