Alt Text versus anchor text?

The differences that google makes between alt text and anchor text

[AhmedF]

Greetings everyone,

I have a question regarding the importance of anchor text / ALT text

Lets say my key word is two words: 'wid get'

Which of the following would be better?

<a href="http://somedomain.com/widget/">Wid get list</a>
or
<a href="http://somedomain.com/widget/"><img src="http://somedomain.com/widget/image.gif" ALT="wid get" border=0></a>

Of these two, would the image one, due to its spot on ALT text be just as prevalent as the text link or is the text link still head and shoulders above the rest?

Thanks for any help

[Dino_M]

ALT text would only add relevance to the page your image is on

Anchor text adds relevance to the page the link is pointing toand the page it's on!

hope this is what you meant

[edited by: Dino_M at 2:51 pm (utc) on Dec. 5, 2002]

[Torben Lundsgaard]

Hi AhmedF, Welcome to Webmaster World [webmasterworld.com]

Some people prefer the text links but Google will follow and pay attetion to the text in both types of links.

Torben

[SlyGuy]

Hello AhmedF,

Welcome [webmasterworld.com] to WebmasterWorld.

IMO, the purpose of alt text is to provide a text equivalent for images and doesn't carry very much weight as far as optimizing a web page is concerned. Stick to anchor text.

Hope that helps.

- Chad

[SuzyUK]

hello AhmedF

You could always use the anchor text as suggested above along with the title attribute, which is considered a useful Accessibilty feature and also gets your Keywords across twice without spamming

i.e.
<a title="Wid Get List" href="http://somedomain.com/widget/">Wid get list</a>

Suzy

[glengara]

I'd also consider <a href="http://somedomain.com/wid-get/">

[annej]

I have gone back and changed some of my page headings that were graphics to <h1>the page heading </h1>. They aren't nearly as pretty (it's a woman's site):) but I changed it as the h1 headings would help my placement with Google.

It looks like alt="the page heading" wouldn't count as much. Is there any way to give a graphic heading more importance?

Anne

[nell]

Try using some title= attributes using keywords. They can be used with almost any tag.

[jimbeetle]

My basic keyword stem is "Large Blue Widget." For directory paths I'm with glengara and use "large-blue-widget." SEs read this better than "largebluewidget."

My "Large Blue Widget" is very commonly abbreviated "LBW." I try to sprinkle the secondary term in text and links where appropriate and not obtrusive to the visitor and rely on alt and title tags to reinforce it. Seems to work halfway well.

Jim

[nativenewyorker]

Is there any difference in SERPs using dashes or underscores with filenames or with titles in tags?

TIA,
Ted

[glengara]

My received wisdom is that dashes are ignored (creating 2-3 words) whereas underscores aren't.

[AhmedF]

Hrmm ... does adding that title='keywords' tag actually work?

[sun818]

Although I do not know how much weight (LOL) is given to alt tags, but they do highlight in Google snippets as big beautiful bold! I would think more sections of the snippet in bold are attractive to the viewer.

[pageoneresults]

My received wisdom is that dashes are ignored (creating 2-3 words) whereas underscores aren't.

glengara, can you expand on that one please. I've been using hyphens now for close to seven years and the hyphens are treated as a space just as the underscores are.

I'm starting to convert from using the alt tag to the title attribute. Why? Because certain browsers do not display the alt tag (Opera) and the title attribute is supported across most browsers that I've tested in. I'm mixing it up depending on the importance of the image.

Is there any difference in SERPs using dashes or underscores with filenames or with titles in tags?

There would be no need to use hyphens or underscores in title attributes or alt tags. Unless of course the word is naturally hypehnated.

I've noticed no difference in the SERP's with hyphens vs. underscores. The only difference is the hyphens look much nicer and the underscores are obscured by the link underline.

[Powdork]

I find alt text to work quite nicely and have #1s that are only linked to with alt text to prove it. There are 0 textual links to this site.

[glengara]

P1R, as you say hyphens are treated as spaces, though I was under the impression underscores were not, or at least didn't work quite as well.

[nancyb]

At one point a few months GG "suggested" that if it were him, he would hyphens. Soooo, I switched to hyphens :)

Be careful using both the alt tag AND the title tag. I don't know whether it hurts, but if they are the same thing, or similar, your snippet might look strange because both may be included.

Both the alt and title were showing for my logo image and since they were almost identical, I removed the title. May go back and use title instead of alt though because I've noticed the same thing as pageoneresults in Opera, NS6.

[nancyb]

just realized my last post is misleading. I did not mean the title tag (as in the head section), I meant the title attribute. Sorry for the misrepresentation.

[Chronos]

Is there any difference in SERPs using dashes or underscores with filenames or with titles in tags?

It makes a huge difference. Our sites all had filenames with underscores, blue_widget_thing and while still frustrated with the lack of listings we were getting I did a search for blue widget thing and got no returned serps as it was a totally unique combination. I did a copy paste to ensure proper spelling and forgot to take out the underscores. Our site lit up the serp! Lady Google thinks that blue_widgets_thing is all one word and will only retun matches to that with the underscores. Also the underscores were creating some problems when we emailed the url, some mail editors would break the url at an underscore.