Ok so today i suddenly thought, most of the time in my different forum sigs and other places i use image links back to my sites.

 

What i would love to know is what is better for link building/seo.

Text links or image links?

Hi,

 

As far as I have read so far, text links (good descriptive anchor text) are best, but also Image links with decent relevant descriptive alt text are also OK.

 

What I haven't understood fully is whether one of those is REALLY better than the other. You can stuff keywords into alt text of an image link without affecting the user experience too much, so part of me thinks that each of these has equal merit depending on the situation.

 

So in a forum situation - I guess it depends on whether you have control over alt text or not....

 

Since this forum is NOFOLLOW - then irrelevant here I guess!!

 

Hope that helps a little!

 

 

Mike

You can stuff keywords into alt text of an image link without affecting the user experience too much...

 

Certainly alt tags should not be used to spam keywords. Blind or partially sighted users do rely heavily on text readers. Add to the fact if your content is good you wont need to spam alt tags anyway.

 

As for links, yes text links are generally better.

Hey buddy always follow the text links because in text links u will get the text on the link...,,,,In image URL u will get URL inside the image.. remember Google"s crawler always cache and index only coding.. In the text link it will get the text in HTML coding.. In Image URL It will get only link not the text which is inside image.. So always follow the text links

Text link is better than image link Because any search engine prefer text link rather than image link.

Id go with text link made up of a good description including keywords if poss.

I would prefer text links ofcourse though if you want to use image link, then you may use alt text..You may add the important keywords there...

There is always the option to use both, an image with a good text description below it. But if I had to decide between the two text links definitely. Much like the meta-keyword tag SEs know that the alt attribute is used for stuffing keywords and I'm sure that the alt tag will go the same way as the meta-keyword eventually and don't think it holds too much weight at the moment.

 

I would agree with charliesaidthat and like rallports response to 'stuffing' keywords in an alt attribute of an img tag... it's a big no. If you use aggressive SEO techniques you will lose your range eventually as the SE develop their algorithms.

I'd always go for a textlink with good keywords rather than an image, altho an image link is also good, and definitely better than no link at all.

if you can use a text link without compromising your design then it is best to do so.