Alt text / internal linking

[HireSpace]

Hi everyone

A question about best practice when linking from pictures on our homepage - hirespace.com

We have an option of using divs with background images (nicer in terms of design) but it means that we can't use anchor text or alt text to show Google what these internal links are about.

The other option is to use images which do not allow us as much flexibility in terms of CSS but would allow us to use alt text.

There is also an opinion that we should have separate text links at the bottom of the homepage to get the anchor page in.

What is best practice in this situation - is alt text worth sacrificing some CSS flexibility for? How important is anchor/alt text for internal linking?

Thanks guys.

[Andy-Halliday]

Very good question. Lets think for one minute that Google and SEO doesn't exist - which option would you go for, I would personally say the first option as they offer a better user experience.

From an SEO point of view having anchor text help to tell the search engine what your page is about is still very useful, especially if there are not many pages around linking to them pages.

If you feel the pages can rank well without the anchor text, have good PA, rank naturally currently I would go with option 1, but if the site is new, or the pages aren't easily discovered in SERPs option 2 has to be the best option.

Sorry I can't be more helpful without knowing the URL you are talking about.

Some good advice can be found here:

http://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text

http://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link

[responsivelabs]

You also need to factor in extra load times using images as opposed to a CSS-initiated background. Although it is important to have anchor text for images on your site, I dont think that you should go out of your way to purposely make the site less usable in exchange for a negligible amount of rank increase. After all, it doesn't matter how well you rank if it doesnt create conversions for you due to slow load times, incompatibilities, etc. I generally like to tell my clients to keep the end-user in mind first, as implementing this type of mindset will usually automatically help you with SEO (quicker load times, better quality content, etc). Just make sure to use alt/anchors for the actual images on your site, and you'll be good. I'd definitely recommend using CSS over hard-coding a bg image. It's better practice, and will decrease load times on all your pages.

[HireSpace]

Thanks so much for the responses. Agree that usability is most important. It's something we have always stuck to. Just want to make the most of internal links. But this is very helpful. Appreciated.