Text links vs image links

Different approaches to good placement in SERPS

[BMach]

As we all know text backlinks with keywords in the link text are very effective at getting good placement in the SERPS. On the other side of things, image links can bring in the PR and then the site can control the PR with internal text links to turn the PR into keyword rich PR to rank well. I see this approach all the time where most backlinks to a site home page are from images. Then a certain page on the site will rank well for a keyphrase because it has 40 internal text backlinks from internal PR 5 pages. I guess what I am trying to get at here is would the site mentioned above that has mainly image backlinks to it's home page be doing better if those links were text links? It is possible to turn "blank" PR into keyword rich PR but wouldn't it be better to get keyword rich PR to a home page and then further it's keyword weight through internal text links? Or are you limited to what you can do with PR if all your backlinks to your home page are keyword rich text links?

[BMach]

Just adding to my original post...

Or are you limited to what you can do with PR if all your backlinks to your home page are keyword rich text links?

Meaning if all your backlinks have just one keyphrase in them, will it be more difficult to change the keyphrase you are targeting if you decide to change your strategy in the future?

And also I realize there is no such thing as "blank" PR. I am sure that PR carries around other relational information. Just trying to focus on the keyword weight that PR carries around on it's journey...

[anime_otaku]

this is just a guess. remember that. links from images with undefined "alt" or alt="" will not contribute to serps from anchor text. links with the desired word in the link for example if everyone linked you with the term "loser" would most likely tell google to associate you with that word. internal links do not appear to affect serp results but incoming links from seperate domains still appear to affect your placement. in short, forget pagerank, just get as many _unique domains_ to link to you with the proper text.

[BMach]

I rely on external anchor text so I'm still doing ok. You bring up a point that I have been noticing in the SERPS lately. Recently I have seen sites that get their PR from images and rely on internal text links to gain position fall back in the SERPS. These sites have many different products or keyphrases so getting image alt text for all the keyphraes would be very difficult. Has this always been the case with internal link text or is this something new? Seems to make sense that external anchor text would be better. It would be much easier to manipulate things using internal anchor text.

[BMach]

So really it should be internal anchor text vs. external anchor text. The link being an image has nothing to do with what I am talking about. I still think internal anchor text has some pull though. Directories would lose their value without it.