Text Links v.s. Image links What's better for SEO

16 years ago

Good question. I have heard here on this forum that putting
unrelated links to your other dot coms on pages is not
good. So, I have changed them all to strictly image links,
no text or alt text. I still want the little traffic you get from
clicks on these links. Anybody know if these are still bad?

Paul

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AndyBlackSEO

16 years ago

Anchor text links are better than image links for seo by far. With regards to internal linking, there is a lot you can do to manipulate page rank, this is where image links and the nofollow attribute can come into play.

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BurgerBoy

16 years ago

Originally Posted by bbrian017

I have a lot of image links out there will they be ranked equal to a text link?

What's better Image Links or Text Links in the eyes of Google?

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Google reads the text in text links and uses it to determine search results just like every other word on the page.

An image link does nothing for you.

See for yourself.

Go to one of your own pages on Google and click on cache and look at your page. The search term results will be hi-lited on your page cache. You will notice the words in the text links are also hi-lited if they contain words that were search for.

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packjack 16 years ago

Of course text links work well but if you have 5-10% of image links as well then that would make you link campaign more natural.
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bbrian017

16 years ago

Originally Posted by BurgerBoy

Google reads the text in text links and uses it to determine search results just like every other word on the page.

An image link does nothing for you.

See for yourself.

Go to one of your own pages on Google and click on cache and look at your page. The search term results will be hi-lited on your page cache. You will notice the words in the text links are also hi-lited if they contain words that were search for.

Burger Boy I think your wrong!

If you look at my backlinks in google!

link:http://www.blogengage.com - Google Search

You will see the first back link I have is from an image!

Rafiqi's is Poodoo FoodMayhem

You can see the image link in the bloggers sidebar!

Also if you add blog engage to this http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker you will see many images are showing up!

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TheHutz 16 years ago

Yeah - image links pass page rank just like any other link, but they will not help you rank for keywords as the search engine does not know what the image contains.

Using Alt text does not get picked up as anchor text either.
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askloz

16 years ago

who ever chose text links, it doesn't matter... cos if you use the ALT attribute in your images and link the image up to a page, if the image doesn't appear or loads too slow, or doesn't a load at all, the ALT text turns into a anchor text link. So TheHutz, you're wrong that it doesn't pick it up as a text link.

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TheHutz

16 years ago

Originally Posted by askloz

who ever chose text links, it doesn't matter... cos if you use the ALT attribute in your images and link the image up to a page, if the image doesn't appear or loads too slow, or doesn't a load at all, the ALT text turns into a anchor text link. So TheHutz, you're wrong that it doesn't pick it up as a text link.

Ah I think you better let some of the Stompernet guys (Leslie Rhode and Jerry West) about that, as they have tested that Alt Text does not count as anchor text.

Maybe their results weren't right? :confused:

I personally would always advise to use alt text from a userbility point of view, for that very reason - if the image fails to load, there is a description of what the image is. It also helps people using screen readers.

As for the "does it count as anchor text" debate - it seems that is still open.

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askloz

16 years ago

Originally Posted by TheHutz

Ah I think you better let some of the Stompernet guys (Leslie Rhode and Jerry West) about that, as they have tested that Alt Text does not count as anchor text.

Maybe their results weren't right? :confused:

Probably, cos I've myth busted a lot of their so called in concrete stuff.

And I've personally tested it myself. That's why I left their group. Only guy out of that lot who knows more than Leslie and Jerry is Dan Thies, and Dan knows that I know what I'm talking about, we had a giggle the other day about some muppet thinking that nofollow links that point to a page do get followed and indexed, when it doesn't.

Trust me, I know... I generate over 10 million hits a month to my network of sites combined, and 80-85% of it is from Google.

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TheHutz 16 years ago

Hmmmm, you see - thats the thing with SEO, it's hard for the average guy to test, and in turn have to rely on others to do so.

What gets me the most, is people appear to lose focus on the user and think far too much about the search engines.

I personally deploy alt text for what it is intended - the user, and if it does get picked up as anchor text on occasions, then thats a bonus.

With regards to (hopefully without going off topic) the fact that a nofollow attribute means Google literally wont follow and index it, how is it that I have a nofollowed link from Technorati, and Google is picking it up via the link command? Surely that wouldnt be there?

Probably an easy explanation to that - but I can't think.
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TheHutz

16 years ago

Originally Posted by askloz

Only guy out of that lot who knows more than Leslie and Jerry is Dan Thies, and Dan knows that I know what I'm talking about, we had a giggle the other day about some muppet thinking that nofollow links that point to a page do get followed and indexed, when it doesn't.

Trust me, I know... I generate over 10 million hits a month to my network of sites combined, and 80-85% of it is from Google.

I don't think it's funny and a good idea to call people a muppet for believing something different, whether it's right or wrong.

People weren't born with SEO knowledge, and you can't tell me that you knew everything when you were starting out - to be honest if anyone knew everything about SEO now, I'd be worried about what they have spent their life on.

Great work with your sites, but if I recall - stats weren't asked for in this thread.

Also the question was what is better for SEO - and I stand firm with saying that text links are better.

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askloz

16 years ago

Originally Posted by TheHutz

I don't think it's funny and a good idea to call people a muppet for believing something different, whether it's right or wrong.

I can when the person was giving advice about seo giving off the vibe they knew more about it than anyone else.

I don't comment based on opinions, I comment based on TESTING! Which most of the ppl online don't bother doing. Even yourself said you dont have the time.

Originally Posted by TheHutz

People weren't born with SEO knowledge, and you can't tell me that you knew everything when you were starting out - to be honest if anyone knew everything about SEO now, I'd be worried about what they have spent their life on.

No, but at least I never gave advice without knowing the facts first.

approx 50-60% of what I know was learned from Brad Callen. The rest from extensive testing.

I even teach SEO, and all those I teach SEO to have experienced an dramatic increase in traffic and page 1 rankings!

Originally Posted by TheHutz

Also the question was what is better for SEO - and I stand firm with saying that text links are better.

Like I said, testing is needed and since you haven't done any, you're living your life in the SEO field under assumptions that are wrong!

Any way, prove to me that text links do better than image alt links

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Steven Heron

16 years ago

From my experience images do pass link juice, and the relevancy is partially determined by the Alt Text of the image, however whether this is equal to or lesser than a text link I cannot say for certain.

It would be great if SEO was studied by some group of people with the scientific method, through proper analysis, induction and deduction, so we would reach almost certain proofs for certain things. Perhaps starting up some sort of non profit scientific SEO organization like that would be good, but then again everyone would be in on the knowledge... perhaps an exclusive master mind group instead? Ohh who knows, I'm just rambling.

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TheHutz

16 years ago

Originally Posted by bbrian017

I have a lot of image links out there will they be ranked equal to a text link?

What's better Image Links or Text Links in the eyes of Google?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by askloz

Any way, prove to me that text links do better than image alt links

Look, don't get me wrong - if you have found otherwise or no proof either way thats great but from what I can see above, alt text was never mentioned in the original question, so from what he's asked - text links are better than image links.

They are not equal to image links (without alt text) as image links just pass page value whereas the text link passes value as well as the description of what the landing page is meant to be about.

So if I had a the choice of a text link from a site or an image link without alt text, I would go for the text link everytime (unless I wanted to mix things up a bit)

The fact that you have passed on about alt text is a bonus to this thread and is appreciated - but I was not wrong by answering the above question the way I did

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askloz

16 years ago

Originally Posted by TheHutz

Look, don't get me wrong - if you have found otherwise or no proof either way thats great but from what I can see above, alt text was never mentioned in the original question, so from what he's asked - text links are better than image links.

Question was, do image links count... yes they do... and to further expand on the question to give a full answer to help the OP, it was suggested to use ALT text..

Originally Posted by TheHutz

They are not equal to image links (without alt text) as image links just pass page value whereas the text link passes value as well as the description of what the landing page is meant to be about.

ur partially right.

if you link up an image to a page, the link it self acts as a keyword if of course the domain and category or page file name has the keyword in it. IF it didn't then google would not highlight the words in an URL string.

sure, not as much weight is applied to it, that's why ya have to use ALT attribute to turn it into a "anchor text image"

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bbrian017

16 years ago

From looking at this page can you tell if I'm linking my images properly?

Blog Engage

If not can you give an example with one of my images on how I should change the code detail?

Great conversation by the way guys!

Thanks for the input!

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askloz

16 years ago

nope, it's wrong..
it should be this:

Code:

<a href="http://www.blogengage.com/user.php?login=USERNAME&view=shaken"><img src="http://www.blogengage.com/images/blog_engage_promo_1.jpg" alt="ENTER KEYWORD DESCRIPTION HERE 30-40 chars is ok"></a>

Originally Posted by bbrian017

From looking at this page can you tell if I'm linking my images properly?

Blog Engage

If not can you give an example with one of my images on how I should change the code detail?

Great conversation by the way guys!

Thanks for the input!

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bbrian017

16 years ago

Thanks I'm changing it to this,

<a href="http://www.blogengage.com/user.php?login=USERNAME&view=shaken"><img src="http://www.blogengage.com/images/blog_engage_promo_1.jpg" alt="Social Networking for Bloggers, Free Blog Submissions, Blog Traffic"></a>

Unless you have a better keyword suggestion

I have changed all the images!

Thanks this means a lot to me anything that will help is good in my books!

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askloz

16 years ago

looks good and natural to me mate

Originally Posted by bbrian017

Unless you have a better keyword suggestion

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bbrian017

16 years ago

askloz,

seeing I have so many links should I mix up three of each?

If it's good for directory submissions it must be good for image links..

I might change a few up!

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askloz

16 years ago

Hey Brian... it's Loz mate, not askloz

generally it's always good practice to mix up your links.

Sticking to the same phrase all the time, can put out a bit of a red flag since it's not normal practice by the masses to hyper link a phrase that matches... like, some ppl will just post a link to a page, another may say

"more info on keyword"

"keyword information here"

yada yada.

I do this for about 20-30% of my links, while trying to use 3 worded phrases, and occassionally 4, so I can rank for any combination of the phrases in the entire phrase, killing two birds with one stone so to speak.

ie

"asbestos poisoning lawyer", can be turned into "asbestos lawyer", asbestos poisoning"

so if i were to just push out links with "asbestos poisoning lawyer", I'll rank for the other two phrases with two words in it at the same time

though will take a little longer to get to top spot, but the main 3 worded phrase will be bloody hard to beat.

You might want to check out Jon Ledgers Webcomp Analyst, this will give you a pretty accurate view on how many links you need in order to rank on first page and even first spot of google for any phrase... so far, it hasn't let me down, and pretty bang on spot... just make sure that the links you get are indexed for them to count

Originally Posted by bbrian017

askloz,

seeing I have so many links should I mix up three of each?

If it's good for directory submissions it must be good for image links..

I might change a few up!

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bbrian017 16 years ago

Ok now your name makes sense! It's Loz but you want people to ask you

Thanks for the help Loz I'll look into this Jon Ledgers Webcomp Analyst asap!

Cheers,

brian
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