Image Links

[melodiousrose]

Do Google bots follow image links with alt tags? Meaning, if I got a bunch of people to link to me from their homepage via an image with my key phrase as the alt tag, will it be as effective as a text link?

[RESteve]

Do Google bots follow image links with alt tags? Meaning, if I got a bunch of people to link to me from their homepage via an image with my key phrase as the alt tag, will it be as effective as a text link?

Well if they link to you with an image, it is still a link.

<a href="http://www.site.com" title="image"><img src="http://www.site.com/image.jpg" alt="image" /></a>

So you see the image is a link with a title tag like normal, and google should see it that way when doing a spider crawl.

Go to any SEO tool site and test it out! Do a spider crawl on the site with your image/link on it and see if the spider picks up the link. If it does, you're in business.

[Lydia]

The answer is yes, and if you think about it, lots of people pass links using images, including REW.

If you are familiar with 'chiclets' they are a pretty popular way to encourage linking, using images.

[JennSellsFast]

The funny thing about image searches is all of the duplicates. So many sites use the same pictures! Copyright infringement anyone?

[Pooter]

The funny thing about image searches is all of the duplicates. So many sites use the same pictures! Copyright infringement anyone?

I don't think that will be an issue, it is no different from a site using the same anchor text on every site they link from.

[Lydia]

Another note, make sure you use the alt tag to describe your image - that could get you traffic results from image searches as well as text searches. I've got a few long tails on my blog from that little gimmick.

[REW Christian]

MySpace also does a lot of image linking and it seems to be a good source of ranking for them. ie: someone running a myspace template site that has loads of image links from myspace members.

[soulfood]

not as effective but still will crawl. seo speaking of course.

[soulfood]

wait a second, maybe I did not understand the original question :P

the keyword weight/emphasis would go to the page where the image, and alt tag are displayed. Not to the site that it links to. Although the spiders will crawl the alt tag I do not believe that they take the alt tag as any type of indicator for the page that the image links to.


great question by the way.