Using images instead of text for my main navigation

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by gregdavidson, Jan 20, 2010.

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  1. #1
    I'm in the process of starting a new website and have decided to use images instead of text for my navigation because it looks so darn attractive. I read on several websites that the best kind of navigation is actually text links with relative anchor text that relates to each page. Would a solid alternative be to add a second navigation on the bottom of the website using text links?
     
    gregdavidson, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  2. siflur

    siflur Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Yeah, I would 'nofollow' the image links, while letting the actual text links stay 'dofollow'. This way it will not hurt your ranking.
    Hope that answered your question :)
     
    siflur, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  3. Revelations-Decoder

    Revelations-Decoder Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Only problem with tat is the spider (in western langauages) reads from top left onwards.

    Text links imho would still be better if your navigation is near the top of pages and contains keywords
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2010
    Revelations-Decoder, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  4. Camay123

    Camay123 Well-Known Member

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    #4
    For your image make sure to use an alt tag, and for the link use a title tag.
     
    Camay123, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  5. Canonical

    Canonical Well-Known Member

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    #5
    I would highly recommend NOT using images for your top navigation. 99 times out of 100 the SAME affect can be created by using a single blank image with the color you want the tab to be and CSS'ing the actual text over top of it. In fact the image typically only needs to be however tall you want the tab to be and a couple pixels wide. You can tile that image horizontally to fill in the rest of the tab (unless you want rounded corners or some other non-rectangular shape). Not only does this approach make the top navigation SEO friendly, it greatly reduces the page load time since only one tiny image needs to be loaded (and cached by the browser) to be used for all non-highlighted tabs and one tiny image for the highlighted version of the tab.

    Don't use images for your top navigation. Those are the MOST valuable links on your site. They appear on the top of every page and the search engines infer that the pages linked to in the top navigation are likely the most important pages on your site. They get passed the most juice and have the most internal inbound links typically. And even if you DO include alt text for each image, it won't carry NEAR the weight that text links (<a>) inside of an unordered list (<UL>) using CSS to display background image for the tabs would.
     
    Canonical, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  6. Revelations-Decoder

    Revelations-Decoder Well-Known Member

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    #6

    Don't use images for your top navigation. Those are the MOST valuable links on your site.

    Well said Canonical

    I always try and get a possible relevance in to personally (when possible)

    Example

    "SEO Portfolio" as opposed to just "Portfolio"
     
    Revelations-Decoder, Jan 20, 2010 IP