alt and title tags?

[Mike]

Do these affect search engine stuff? I've read in some places its good, and others its just to describe images etc.

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

They exist for accessibility reasons.

title attibutes are meant to describe links, what is the link linking to? For instance you might use "click here" as the anchor text but then in the title attribute you could put the title of the page you're linking to.

alt attributes are meant to describe images so that browsers that do not display images can display the text instead.

In both cases you should try to use your site's keywords, but remain true to the purpose of the attribute.

For instance using keyword rich alt tags on an invisible spacer gif is obvious spam since an invisible spacer gif does not need any alt text.