I know that to increase the position of a website in Search Engines, one of the huge list of modifications that you need to do to a website is to have External Links Linking to your site.. such a <a href=" www.mysite.com/food " > Food I was guessing if it is the same or not, to ad an image link.. such as <a href=" www.mysite.com/food " > <img src=" food.gif"> Thanks!
It's not exactly the same from a SEO standpoint. The text link contains anchor text (the clickable text of the hyperlink) that the image link does not.