Live Text in Navigation Vs. Image - Does this affect SEO
-
I recently was asked the question if having live text in the navigation vs and image affect seo. For example, refer to this link http://markup.io/v/avsaenq856kw the navigation highlighted is seperate images. The html elements read : ![](</span><strong style=)/images/procedures.png">
Live text html reads like this: Breast »
What is better for seo value, or does it now matter having live text or an image?
-
Useing text or alt tag is ok. as a text is visisble and alt tag is not, one tends to believe that search engines will like it better.
But dont hide text, a lot of users use text-indent: -99999px to move text off the screen. This is a signal of spam to google.
-
Hi Jason,
In a pure SEO perspective, I would say that Text Links are absolutely your best choice. If you choose to use the Image links don't forget to fill the alt tag. If you can go with the text links, they work just better. Image link may be better for user visual experience, but in my SEO perspective, design come second in term of performances.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Ranking: Can Child Theme Compete with Custom Theme?
Ranking for New York City commercial real estate is extremely competitive. We compete against: www.squarefoot.com, www.42floors.com, www.Loopnet.com, www.wework.com and a dozen other optimized sites. Our site was designed in 2012. We plan on upgrading it. From an SEO perspective, can we compete by purchasing a Wordpress real estate theme and customizing it into a child theme? Our better ranking competitors are using custom themes where the code has been very streamlined to make the sites quick and easy to index by spiders. Would we gain a significant edge by custom coding? This is somewhat technical for a business owner and I am trying to get my head around it. Our existing site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Some of the themes we are considering are: -http://main.wpestatetheme.org/homepage -http://houzez01.favethemes.com/ -http://realhomes.inspirythemes.biz/property/ From an SEO perspective is creating a child theme from the above a good approach? Or will a custom theme give us an advantage. If there is an advantage is that edge so marginal that it is not significant? In terms of coding, is a custom site much more labor, 2x, 3x the time to code? Also is the maintenance of a custom site much more involved? Also, as a related question, my developer since 2012 has created many custom plugins for Wordpress. Is this a no, no? Will avoiding custom plugins add to the development cost? Even if we use a child theme from an existing real estate website, I would hope that the improved user interface will provide a boast in at least conversions if not SEO. Thanks, Alan
Web Design | | Kingalan10 -
New Website Redesign: Any Design Comments or SEO Suggestions?
Hi! We recently launched our new website after MONTHS of work. Now that it is live, we are looking to fine tune the design and SEO efforts. This is our new website. And for reference, this is our old website. Any and all comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help! Mike
Web Design | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate
Web Design | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Redirecting Images
Hi, I'm wondering how important it is when relaunching a site on a new platform (switching to Drupal) to serve up images from the same file paths in order to ensure consistency during the changeover. I've tried to keep the questions straightforward so that this post can be useful to people in a similar situation in future: How much difference do the file paths make to SEO? Does Google care or even notice if the image file paths change? Is it worth forcing Drupal to mimic our old file paths for the sake of consistency with the old site in order to maintain rankings OR do we take the opportunity to redesign our file paths for better SEO? Any help would be much appreciated 🙂
Web Design | | Tinhat0 -
Political Campaign SEO
We are considering taking a candidate for office on as a client. The run would be for a state office in the U.S. by someone who is involved in politics/government but not currently an elected official. The candidacy would not be for a couple of years and the exploratory committee approached us asking if we would take on. Sooo, decision time. First, yes I like the candidate (as much as I like business I could not do it otherwise). Next, candidate has no real public persona other than FB, LinkedIn, etc. Our approach is to shut all down all social first - to prevent anything that is harmless from being manipulated - and then revise to a political run. Also to create a site for candidate that is not necessarily a political one that could gain some DA, PA over time as the candidate begins to put out opinion pieces, etc. around their beliefs in what is workable/needed. We would maintain the site utilizing SEO until the announcement to run is made and then have a full political candidacy site go live with 301's from old site. Obviously, I am not at liberty to say names, etc. and some of our strategy specifics must be kept confidential as well. I would be interested in your opinions and thoughts on the approach and also if someone has handled SEO/SEM politically and has insight as to whether I should act like I am in the movies and ... RUN FORREST RUN!!! 😉 Thanks,
Web Design | | RobertFisher1 -
International SEO issues for multiple sites
We currently have 3 websites: oursite.co.uk oursite.fr oursite.ch We also own Oursite.com, and that URL currently redirects to Oursite.fr. We are considering a complete site redesign and a possible merge of the 3 sites. Assumptions: ** the 3 sites currently receive organic search traffic to varying degrees
Web Design | | darkgreenguy
** Oursite.ch is almost identical to Oursite.fr in terms of the site content
** Our target market is NOT the USA for English-language searches. It is the UK. With a re-design, we see our options as follows: Merge the 3 sites and make Oursite.com the "main site" and then have subfolders as follows: /uk /fr /ch Keep the 3 sites as they are. We see Option 1 as the best in terms of saving time when updating the site, and saving money paid to the site developers (1 site vs 3 sites). We see Option 2 as the best in terms of ability of the site to rank, as well as confidence of searchers when seeing our site in the search results (in other words, a person searching in France would be more likely to buy and/or submit a form on our site if they saw Oursite.fr vs Oursite.com/fr). I guess we're looking for some suggestions/guidance here. Are we missing any big issues? Does anyone have experience with an issue such as this? Thank you in advance...
-Shawn0 -
How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons: 1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user 2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100. 3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php) 4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on. In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more. Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs) What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site? What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
Web Design | | deuce1s0 -
Is there such thing as too much product information in terms of SEO
Hi All, Our website sells products online and is a prestashop system Prestashop comes with a set form you use to fill in products, however to fill it all you end up creating alot of repeated data. What i need to know, is if you have: Product name: Audi A6 Rear Lamp Set Short Description: A Short & Sweet Description Long Description: A Long Boring Description Meta Title: Same as product name Meta Keywords: What more can be said about an A6 Rear Lamp Set??? Meta Description: Same as long and boring description Im stuck in a position of having the ability to add extra information (i.e Meta-Tags) But really ill end up repeating what is already in the products natural listing. In terms of good SEO, is it better to leave Meta Fields empty, or fill them in and be repetitive for product pages? Thanks all, any guidance will be well appreciated <colgroup><col width="57"><col width="36"><col width="323"><col width="328"><col width="56"><col width="26"><col width="55"><col width="23"><col span="2" width="25"><col width="24"><col width="25"><col width="95"><col width="158"><col width="123"><col width="130"><col width="28"><col width="34"><col span="2" width="64"><col width="537"><col width="188"><col width="319"><col width="303"><col width="329"><col width="177"><col width="96"><col width="128"><col width="172"><col width="547"><col width="62"><col width="87"><col width="85"><col width="94"><col width="162"></colgroup>
Web Design | | Ev84
| ID | Active (0/1) | Name* | Categories (x,y,z...) | Price tax excl (+10%) | Tax rate | Wholesale price | On sale (0/1) | Reduction amount | Reduction per cent | Reduction from (yyyy-mm-dd) | Reduction to (yyyy-mm-dd) | Reference # | Supplier reference # | Supplier | Manufacturer | EAN13 | Ecotax | Weight | Quantity | Short description | Description | Tags (x,y,z...) | Meta-title | Meta-keywords | Meta-Description | URL Rewrited | Text when in-stock | Text if back-order allowed | Image URLs (x,y,z...) | Feature |
|
| Price tax excl | Percentage Profit |0