Using an Image Link for SEO Benefit

[cheesy snacks]

Hi im about to advertise on a very well established site in my niche. Basically they have asked me for an image to use on their site.

Obviously as well as the raw visitors I will recieve I want to claim the obvious SEO benefit.

Im just wondering what is the best way to display the link image? Ideally I'd like a text link from the site but I dont think this is going to happen,so gonna have to make do with a gif.

is it just a case of stuffing the alt tags with my keywords? Is there any way to add anchor text that google would crawl?

[tedster]

If you are paying for this advertising, then Google says you should use a rel="nofollow" tag in the link. This will negate any possible SEO benefit for you, leaving the traffic benefit only. If this image is being used because someone really digs your site, it still "might be" looked at as a paid link. In some cases, the value of a paid link not only gets negated but also triggers a penalty.

That said, in a linked image that Google does not suspect as being paid, the alt attribute's value is used to pass link juice for those words, although at quite a lower level than pure anchor text. You asked about "stuffing" - that can kill the value of the alt text, too. The alt attribute's text should represent what text on the image says, so that assistive technologies such as screen readers can report that information to their users.