Removing images from site and Image Sitemap SEO advice

[allstatetransmission]

Hello again,

I have received an update request where they want me to remove images from this site (as of now its a bunch of thumbnails) current page design: http://1stimpressions.com/portfolio/car-wraps/

and turn it into a new design which utilized a slider (such as this): http://1stimpressions.com/portfolio/

They don't want the thumbnails on the page anymore. My question is since my site has a image sitemap that has been indexed will removing all the images hurt my SEO greatly? What would the recommended steps to take to reduce any SEO damage be, if so?

Thank you again for your help, always great and very helpful feedback!

cheers!

[customerparadigm.com]

Jeff-

The slider is certainly a bit nicer from a design perspective, but the client does have quite a few images that have been indexed by Google images (see screenshot below).

That said, I ran both pages through a spider simulator, and the non-slider (thumbnails) does index / link to an image in each case.

The slider version shows the image name as plain text, but doesn't recognize the images as links.  So the slider, in my opinion, isn't as helpful for SEO as the thumbnail version.  It might be a more engaging consumer experience though.

One option: on the slider, allow someone to click on the image to view on a larger scale.  That link would likely display...

Hope this helps...

• Jeff

1st-impressions-non-slider-spider-simulator.jpg 1st-impressions-slider-spider-simulator.jpg 1st-impressions-google-images-results.jpg

[allstatetransmission]

Good idea! I appreciate the time and feedback, Thank you!

I will try what you said on a few slider images and see if it shows the images when crawled. Maybe I can pop the the same images as the links out on some of them so they are still being used on the page and not lose too much "juice"