I'm wondering whether it's worth incorporating a general horizontal menu under the images. This way it'd still be friendly images with the word underneath. Though personally I'd rather avoid this old style menu all together. Just reading around and here and there it appears that these kind of menus aren't that great for SEO optimisation. Is it really going to have that greater effect on the SEO of the site?
It’s always better to go for text menu than image menu for SEO. If you are using a text menu, you can have fully qualified domain names for internal links which will positively affect ranking.
Thanks for the response, though what do you mean by fully qualified domain names for internal links? If you're meaning a link on the homepage such as 'videos' could be ranked in google without being under the main website url, well couldn't they just that info from the title/alt tags?
who says image menus cannot qualify for sitelinks? I will prove them wrong put the bets on. They are your most important navigation links - so one problem I see with them is they might load slower a little if not properly handled with image sprites. One stupid client of mine actually insisted on them loading one after the other as it gave an animation effect. LOLZ. But the fact remains that a text link is better than an image link. But given that your main navigation area is a site wide content block the links will have lesser importance already on a per page basis. Over all they turn out to be the most important though.
If you use image than you should use alt image tag and your keyword justify to image. if you use text with anchor tag it better than image anchor tag.
EPIC LOLZ! hahahaha, man I can just picture that kind of client! Thanks for the info though. Confirms my theories. Really? I didn't think there'd be a difference? Yeah that's my whole reason for going for an image menu, it looks more user firendly/interactvie and when 'all' the tags are there and correct then there's no reason it should be less favoured than a dodgy website with a text menu. Overall thanks for your feedback guys, it kind of confirms, for the most part, my suspicions. If anyone else would like to comment or share their opinion I'm still all ears!
Personally I would go with a text menu. Depending on your nav images, most image navigation can be duplicated with CSS which will load faster and cut down on the total size of your page.
These aren't regular images mate, they're specially made ones and they are loading via css. The homepage is instantaneous loading, therefore I don't see a reason for text menu. Text menus are old and boring. These days we live in a modern media world, so I look at it why not have a better graphical design. Is there any othe rreason you'd opt for a text menu?
If you are comfortable with the image nav, then I say go for it. I would just make sure you have optimized alt text for each one.
Thanks for the quick response! Yes I'm optimising the alt and title tags, without making them spammy. I'm trying to think light design but efficient core/backend. This way no matter what updates Google releases in the future, my site will still be constant. Therefore rankings will only ever go up, never down. I guess I figure the key is be honest, play by honest rules and above all don't piss Google off.
One other quick thing, if you are adding alt text and link titles to each nav link, then I would not use the same text for both elements otherwise it might look a little like keyword stuffing. Try varying them some so they are not the same.
I'd honestly be suprised if this was the case for a menu. Though it is a good point. Perhaps adding 'menu image' to the end of the alt tag would be a better way to go...