Link text vs. image alt tags

[Marcia]

Chris_R mentioned in a Google thread that alt tags are treated like regular page text.

Now I'm wondering whether if there's a little graphic link whether the alt text will be equivalent to text used in a link. I kind of doubt it, but it's an interesting thought.

I am also wondering about what the difference in weight would be if a title graphic with alt text is used rather than an H2 heading.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Marshall]

Marcia,

If I understand you correctly, you can use the title="" in the anchor tag. However, I'm not sure how much weight this adds to SE's.

And personally, I avoid graphics for titles in lieu of H tags. I don't think they carry more weight. Besides, why add to download time.

[glengara]

In a title graphic I used both Alt , H, and title tags.
This way it displays the graphic header title in H3 text before the graphic is fully downloaded.

Downsides? I'll bow to others expertise.

[tedster]

I found that a title attribute in a link is VERY helpful, whether the link is text or a graphic. Note that the title attribute belongs to the anchor tag, not the image tag. Title attribute text is probably most helpful for the page it points to, rather than the page it is on. Some algos trust an inbound title attribute even more than the Page Title.

I have doubts that placing an image in an H tag does anything much to boost the value of the alt text. But I'm sure that true text in an H tag gets weighted more than ordinary text (I'd guess between 5x and 10x). So I stick with text.

From what I've seen, I feel it's helpful to use H tags in a true information hierarchy structure. Just sprinkling them around the page is a questionable practice, IMO. It MAY help with some engines, but I'm pretty sure that the best algos ignore H tag spamming -- it's just too common.

I get best results by holding to a pattern like this. It works, and it's exactly what H tags were created for -- informational structure, just like an outline:

H1
--paragraph
----H2
------paragraph
--------H3
----------paragraph
--------H3
----------paragraph
----H2
------paragraph
----H2
------paragraph