SEO with image link alt text vs standard text-based link

Question

Hi,

I'm currently developing a website and the main navigation is made up of image links because the font used for them isn't standard.

My client's only worry is will this mess up search engine optimization? Can I just add alt text to the images like "link 1" or use the name attribute of the anchor tag? Or would it be better to just have the navigation as anchor tags with the names of the links in them like: <a href="...">link 1</a>?

I'm new to SEO so really don't know which to suggest to him,

Thanks for your time,

InfinitiFizz

Answer 1

I think that most search engines will use the Alt Text instead of the image, so as long as you specify an alt tag, you should be ok.

The alternative is to use Regular text, but then set its indent to be way off the screen, and then put a background image over it.

Personally, I would just use the alt tag

Answer 2

Text links are an authority over image based links. While search engines will utilize alt and title tags to identify the content of the image your anchor text is still King. Remember a search engine spider can download an image file, but it can't see it like humans can. A search engine spider however loves and reads text.

If you're worried about using a custom font than use an alternate solution such as sIFR or @font-face.

Answer 3

My recomendation is always to use real text in your navigation, if your using a non standard font then use font replacement, it is supported by all the major broswers to achive the look you want.

see http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ as you are using the font on site I will assume you have a licence so you can use font squirrels upload and make all the css / etc for you in about 20 seconds.

If you must use an image then make sure that the image has an alt attribute and the link has a title attrubute.

e.g
<a href="home.html" title="home page"><img src="/home/home.gif" alt="home page"/></a>