Image Backlinks

[G_Lee]

Hello:

This my first time posting here, and I am new to the field of SEO. So thanks in advance for any assistance!

The website I am optimizing against in Google shows 21 Referring Domains and 1,433 External Backlinks. The Backlink Breakdown shows Images: 942.

Can someone please explain what this means, and how you go about getting backlinks from images? Is the URL contained inn the EXIF data from the image, or is a URL reference made in the IMG ALT attribute?

Thanks,

Grayson

[piatkow]

Do you mean that the source of the link is an image rather than a web page or that the target file is one of your images rather than the web page on which it is displayed?

I don't know of any way to link from an image except to put the img tag between anchor tags which would show the source as the page not the image.

Linking to an image is no problem, you can link to any file type not just web pages. It is something that I see done fairly regularly in some forums.

[G_Lee]

Hello:

Thanks for the reply. The informtation that I listed was obtained from a Majestic SEO Site Explorer Report. I have no other information than that. Would a copy of the report be of assistance?

Thanks,

Grayson

[ZydoSEO]

Hello G_Lee. Welcome to Webmaster World.

A typical text link consists of an opening anchor tag with an HREF attibute pointing to the page to which you're linking followed by the link text followed by a closing anchor tag like this:

<a href="URLBeingLinkedTo">My Link Text</a>

Many times you want to have an image (instead of text) that is "clickable" so that when you click on the image it takes you to another page. This is achieved by placing an <img> element inside the anchor (<a>) element where the link text would normally appear like this:

<a href="URLBeingLinkedTo"><img src="URLOfTheImageToDisplay"></a>

This will display an image located at URLOfTheImageToDisplay and if you click on that image, you will be taken to URLBeingLinkedTo.

A common example of this is most web sites have a logo image in the top left corner of all of their pages. That image is typically an image link that will take you back to the home page.

[G_Lee]

Thanks for your reply.

What would be the best approach for optimizing against this competition?

At first glance, it appears that most of the external backlinks are coming from a relatively small number of referring domains.

Regards,

Grayson

[ZydoSEO]

Without knowing details, it's honestly hard to say.

Links are still a huge part of rankings as they affect so many different ranking factors. I would say, with recent changes at Google like Penguin, that I would avoid acquiring links from low quality sites. I would also avoid acquiring site wide links from other sites (like blog roll links or footer links), especially if they contain keyword rich anchors (something other than the company name or its domain name) and/or are from non-authoritative sites. Such links create an unnaturally high percentage of backlinks with the same keyword rich anchor text.

[G_Lee]

What details would help?