Forum Moderators: martinibuster
-text links with meaningless anchor text
or
-img links with targetted ALT description
Goto a page on your site that uses the alt img tag. Checkout the cached snapshot of the page (right click if you have G toolbar). Click on "cached text" only.
For all the imgages that use the alt img tag you will see that the links look like normal text links with the alt img text as the text. For those images that dont link to another page... there is no text at all.
IMO - I think G discounts the link a bit because it could be easily abused. I could be wrong because people are not going around selling imgage links but they are selling text links. Also... for traditional SEO I believe the text in the alt img tag is ignored if the image is not linked to a page.
It all really depends on how meaningless the anchor text is of the text link. Are there no keywords at all? I think I would go with the alt img tag myself.
-Trey
It all really depends on how meaningless the anchor text is of the text link. Are there no keywords at all?
im offering a free service (similar to a hit counter, dont want to get too specific) to webmasters so i want to add a non-intrusive backlink to my own site.
I can either link back with text = www.mydomain.com (my domain has no keywords) or with a small image...
IMO - I think G discounts the link a bit because it could be easily abused.
do you think they discount its value as a LINK or the value of its anchor text (alt text)?
btw: how do you think a site will rank in Google if it has MASSIVE PR but meaningless anchor text? i assume its index will rank poorly but its sub sections will rank well (since the index - a page of high PR - is pointing to them!)
do you think they discount its value as a LINK or the value of its anchor text (alt text)?
This is a really hard question and probably couldnt be answered without a great deal experimentation.
I can only speculate....
Reasons why there would be a dampening factor...
- Webmasters stuff their alt img tags with keywords.
- The tags are nearly invisible to the internet user.
- Could be easily abused by buying banners
Reasons why there wouldnt be a dampening factor...
- A vote is a vote and PR should be transfered
- The alt img tag is text that describes the page the link is pointing too when used correctly.
IMO - This is how PR and anchor text works...
Say you have a link to a page that has a three word keyword
great red widgets
That page in a search query
"great red widgets" gets one full vote
"red widgets" gets 2/3 of a vote
"great widgets" gets 2/3 of a vote
"widgets" gets 1/3 of a vote
Total PR transfered = one full vote
IMO - The alt img tag and PR works like this...
D = dampening factory
In a search query
"great red widgets" gets one full vote x D
"red widgets" gets 2/3 of a vote x D
"great widgets" gets 2/3 of a vote x D
"widgets" gets 1/3 of a vote x D
Total PR transfered = one full vote without dampening factor
D is based solely on how much webmasters abuse the tag.
So... to answer your question... I think their might be a dampening factor in how much it helps you in a search query but total PR is transfered.
Im basing this on having linked a domain with 7 PR 5 homepage banners using a specific keyword phrase. My rankings increased for the phrase but not as much as what I thought it would.
btw: how do you think a site will rank in Google if it has MASSIVE PR but meaningless anchor text? i assume its index will rank poorly but its sub sections will rank well (since the index - a page of high PR - is pointing to them!)
I agree with your assumption.
-Trey
