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I'm currently developing a website and the main navigation is made up of image links because the font used for them isn't standard.
My client's only worry is will this mess up search engine optimization? Can I just add alt text to the images like "link 1" or use the name attribute of the anchor tag? Or would it be better to just have the navigation as anchor tags with the names of the links in them like: <a href="...">link 1</a>?
I'm new to SEO so really don't know which to suggest to him,
Thanks for your time,
InfinitiFizz
721
Even though this is important for SEO purposes, it is also helpful for people who are visually impaired who might not otherwise know what the image is about. Make sure you include alt text for all of your images and videos to get the most out of them. Alt Tag: What Is Image SEO?
Fortunately, there’s a relatively simple way to solve this problem to improve your SEO and user experience: image alternative text. What Is Alternative Text? Alternative text, often just called "alt text," is an HTML attribute added to image tags to provide a description of the image:
Usually, alt text is not visible on your website. However if an image is broken or cannot be found, then your users will be able to see the alternate text with a broken image icon next to it. Alt text is used for accessibility and image SEO, while title field is used internally by WordPress for media search.
An alternative text is an html attribute that should always be added to your image (<img>) elements. Alt texts provide a textual alternative to visual content in web pages. The textual alternative should describe the appearance and function of the image on the page.
Text links are an authority over image based links. While search engines will utilize alt and title tags to identify the content of the image your anchor text is still King. Remember a search engine spider can download an image file, but it can't see it like humans can. A search engine spider however loves and reads text.
If you're worried about using a custom font than use an alternate solution such as sIFR or @font-face.
96
My recomendation is always to use real text in your navigation, if your using a non standard font then use font replacement, it is supported by all the major broswers to achive the look you want.
see http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ as you are using the font on site I will assume you have a licence so you can use font squirrels upload and make all the css / etc for you in about 20 seconds.
If you must use an image then make sure that the image has an alt attribute and the link has a title attrubute.
e.g
<a href="home.html" title="home page"><img src="/home/home.gif" alt="home page"/></a>
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