Theme Dillution and Linking

A Couple of Questions About Possible Theme Dillution Due to Linking

[AlbinoRhyno]

I've been researching themes, and have a couple of questions that I hope someone has run across.

1.Does advertising have an effect on theme power? E.g. if a football site has an advertisement for X10 spy cams, does it dillute the football theme? Also, does it matter if the advertisement is a banner ad, text ad, or popup/under? I would think that a text ad would definitely dillute the theme power, the banner ad might dillute (link leading to off-theme site), and the popup/under probably wouldn’t.

2.Which has more weight in a theme ranking algo: text link w/ descriptive text to a keyword named url, or a graphic with the same descriptive text in an alt tag, the same keyword in the name of the graphic file, and the same link to the keyword named url. E.g. I have:

<a href=www.domain.com/keyword.html title=keyword>Great source for (keyword)’s</a>

and

<a href=www.domain.com/keyword.html title=keyword><img alt=Great source for (keyword)’s> source=www.domain.com/keyword.gif></a>

Which would be more optimal? The reason I ask is that graphic navigation is often preferable from a user standpoint, although it seems that text is weighted higher in links for search engines…

Thanks-

[brotherhood of LAN]

1. I couldnt comment, though having an ad at the top of the page that has an image alt of "click here" wont do rankings any good

2. IMO, i would go for text links. As nice as graphics seem, most if not all spiders can READ images.

Using text means you can add your keywords for that page, and get the bonus from many SE's of having keywords in your links.

<suggestion> maybe offer a link to open a new window with your flash/graphics navigation - where clicking on options loads up the parent page. Maybe thats even a bonus for making your pages smaller but still having the same graphical option. Maybe?