tedster - 8:15 pm on Sep 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

Most people in this game know that anchor text is more powerful than image links, even image links with a good alt attribute. But just how much more powerful is it? I recently had a chance to test this in a relatively controlled situation.

The site was already successful in their niche - and it's pretty competitive, with 400 million Google results on the big trophy keyword. The pages looked sharp, but the main navigation (top and left) was created with images of text with alt attributes, not anchor text. And javascript rollovers, naturally.

The only change so far was to switch this setup to CSS styled text menus (links in list elements) a few weeks back. And funny thing, the look is so close to the original that no end user or affiliate has yet commented on the change. Some of the business staff haven't even noticed.

At any rate, with the Google changes on Sep 15, we got our first look at the new rankings. On the trophy keyword, the home page went up about 45 positions, from out of the running to a second page contender. With lots more improvements to go, this picture is quite hopeful. The power of anchor text on the main navigation turned out to be BIG.

Lots of other major keywords went to #1 or into the top 3, from previously being 10, 20, or more positions down. In all, it looks like 200 phrases have improved from the benchmark sample we are tracking. I'm sure as the new conversions start to show up, we'll learn about lots more keywords that are worth tracking and tweaking, too.

Lesson for me -- don't let the issue slide when it comes to using text in main navigvation. It's a lot more important than I used to think, and I used to think it was pretty important anyway.

[edited by: tedster at 1:38 am (utc) on Sep. 19, 2006]