MikeNoLastName - 10:47 pm on Jan 9, 2013 (gmt 0)

>If you look at the nav. here it's a great example of 'what to do'. <

If you mean this current forum page, I'm not so sure. I see one link that says "homepage" (in the top-left logo graphic alt) and at least 3 other links to the home page using text "home". I thought one big no-no was to have multiple links to the same page, especially with different anchor text.
I also see a graphic "Post Reply" which has alt="add your comments" which links to the same place as the text link: "reply to this topic".

Not to mention also multiple links to: :"Forums Index / Google / Google SEO News and Discussion". I totally agree these are for the benefit of the user and make for a "better user experience", but I don't know that G always rewards what they preach.


> Would it be safer to link with graphic (text graphic or photo) instead of text? <

I don't think so, considering the latest HTML validation now REQUIRES an alt= tag, which would be used as the anchor text. I guess you could use "" or " ".

Nippi: Did you, conversely, see any pages with this type of linking which were NOT affected? i.e. could it just be a coincidental 3 out of 100 others which all had that same style but 97 weren't affected?

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 11:03 pm (utc) on Jan 9, 2013]