Main navigation with pictures & Alt Tags vs Text/ Link based Navigation

[Naturalmente]

Hi,

do I loose an opportunity to rank better if I use a navigation with Alt-tagged Pictures in comparison to a Text/ Link based main navigation?

Thanks, Sebastian

[Naturalmente]

Thank you both for your good answers!

[BryanCasson]

I would always prefer to use text based navigation for my main menu. Google likes text and looks for text in all elements of the page including the "alt" pictures, however I always feel that for both robots and human users text based menus are the way to go. What happens if your image menu does not load? What happens if the images take a while to load and slow down your site? There is nothing quicker that a text menu. Don't forget, you also lose your anchor text. If you feel that the image menu if the only thing that will work with your design then go ahead and use it, but make sure:

1. It is fast

2. Uses "alt tags"

3. Add some text links to that page... maybe as footer links.

[edwardlewis]

Yeah. pretty much. It will also cause problems potentially with accessibility and how easy  it will be to make your site responsive so it can be viewed on different devices.

Each image will be an http request.. depending on the rest of your site these can add up and make your site slow

It will also cause problems in the future if you want to add/remove/update things