What is best for Search engine results : "alt=" text on images/just text on a page?

Draeger · 16 Feb 2009 at 15:02

Just wondering out loud here.

Two websites both almost identical, both with the same header, footer and navigation.

One however, has pages where the main content is made up of text plus clickable thumbnail images for subjects which take the viewer to a page with text dealing with that subject. The images all have a description via the alt= tag.

The other website has pages where the main content is made up of text plus text links rather than images which take the viewer to a page with text dealing with that subject. There are no clickable thumbnails.

Does the one with no thumbnails have an advantage over the one with clickable thumbnails when it comes to search engines crawling the pages?. Does the likes of Googlebot and the Yahoo bot prefer to see plain auld text and text links in front of it or does it not differentiate between the two?.

Ta. :cool:

cjmUK · 16 Feb 2009 at 16:36

The ALT attribute of an image holds the same value as the textual portion of a link. Combine this with the infinitesimally small advantage that might be offered by the TITLE attribute as well, and it suggest the the image links are equally if not better than text links - especially when you consider that websites are primarily designed for humans first, and SEs last.

Draeger · 17 Feb 2009 at 11:54

Thanks for that, it's kinda what I suspected.

I'm just sometimes in a quandry when it comes to links on pages to other pages whether to have a nice, attractive clickable thumbnail or a boring old text link.

cjmUK · 17 Feb 2009 at 12:16

Text links don't have to be boring, and I'd stick with them for site navigation - that is, I generally wouldn't bother creating graphical buttons. It's a usability issue (apart from the obvious unnecessary bloating)

But in your page, where your images are of something relevant, making the image a link, is a) intuitive for the user and b) acceptable to SEs (providing you use ALT/TITLE).

(you could also use both; a text link beneath each image. Might add a little extra weight to certain keywords, and catches all users)