After reading some articles, I have gotten the impression that text links can improve rank on Google, as Google can read the text and links are important. If this is true, would this mean that a text link would help me improve my Google rank more than a picture link that google cannot read?

I would think yea... i dunno exactally how search engines work. My guess would be it would be better to have text links since it can read them though....

Another reason is that you see hundreds of images on a site.. alot of them not being links. You have many words on your site also, but colour and styles seperates them from images making them more recognizable :-

People know what text links look like
People mistake image links for regular images....


If you ask me, text links are the way to go.. unless the image is obviously a link


Andy

Actually Image links are just fine, as long as you put in ALT text. For example:



Is a bad image link.



Is a good image link.



You should actually use ALT tags on all images that have a purpose.. for example.. logos, links, diagrams, and anything else that isn't directly related to layout (so dont alt-tag backgrounds, spacer.gif's, etc)

Mainly for people who choose to use text-only browsers, but also for other reasons.

Through testing, Google does not give as much credit to image links (even if they use alt text) as it does to actual text links.

Best idea when linking is to use your important keywords as the hypertext (clickable part)!!

would think that the xhtml property "title" inside the <a> link tag, would be read the same with an image inside it as a text bit inside of it

figures

Jay, it does... but think of it this way... if you have a text link would the weighting be higher if you had both the "title" attribute and the anchor text or would it be higher if you just had the "title" attribute?

The important thing to keep in mind is that search engines pay more attention to the on-page-text (especially Yahoo) than they do to anything else... however, since it is proper coding technique and it is used for accessibility features (susch as for the visually impaired) the search engines give it a higher rating than if you just used in image, for example.

However, it does not hurt also to have the "title" text as well as the ALT text on an image link, it is just not as strong...

Marc

Just a suggestion; you could also include meta tags with keywords in your website...it would make it more certain that the Google spiderbot finds them.

Thank you for good infos