nofollow on image links

[inertia]

I've asked a similar questions before but the subject has come up again and I'm still debating the issue.

Question: Should you add "nofollow" to images that link when the text link equivalent is next to them? The theory being that this will place more weight on the keyword in the text link.

Any thoughts?

[activeco]

What do you mean? Something like:

<a href="http://www.example.com">Anchor<img src="image.jpg" /></a>

?

[subhzash]

Originally Posted by inertia

I've asked a similar questions before but the subject has come up again and I'm still debating the issue.

Question: Should you add "nofollow" to images that link when the text link equivalent is next to them? The theory being that this will place more weight on the keyword in the text link.

Any thoughts?

I don't understand what do you mean by text equivalent link followed by image?? Please explain in details or give an example

[kevsta]

do you mean that you link twice to the page, by both text and image?

[inertia]

Originally Posted by kevsta

do you mean that you link twice to the page, by both text and image?

Yep thats it. Often on product pages you will have an image link then a text link as well. Look at any eBay results page and you can see what i mean.

Sometimes these links are only one bit of coding but sometimes you have to have two anchors; one round the image and one round the text. Now...the theory is that the image links dilute the text links and as text is better for search engines you should no follow the images.

This is a theory I've had presented to me...

[kevsta]

have also heard this and would think that linking once by text is better than twice as have seen people saying Google will devalue the second link to the same page anyway.

quite how they know these things is another matter

[AcmeSEO]

Best to use just one link, and yes, the text link certainly carries the weight over an image link. However there are tests that have shown users prefer clicking on graphic navigation over text navigation so both is okay if you choose too.

You can nofollow the image links to funnel the weight to the text links yes.

Robert
SEO Expert Search Engine Optimization Marketing Specialist

[Zombie Master]

We resolve this by using a robots.txt in our main directory. It tells the bots not to search certain folders such as cgi and image.

Because we are a large tourism site, we do not really want our images listed with Google & Gang so our bandwidth is not impacted upon.

Here's an example of the robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.xxx.com/ror.xml

Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /css/
Disallow: /eurohotels/
Disallow: /hotels/
Disallow: /photos/
Disallow: /discounts/
Disallow: /js/
Disallow: /rsscb/
Disallow: /logos/
Disallow: /eco/
Disallow: /calhotels/
Disallow: /tours/
Disallow: /sandiego/images
Disallow: /sandiego/hotels
Disallow: /sandiego/profiles
Disallow: /sandiego/css
Disallow: /sandiego/newsphotos
Disallow: /sandiego/logos
Disallow: /sandiego/js

I'm told the spiders do not wish to waste their time crawling around inside these folders and will like you better.

It's a win/win in my opinion.

Hope this helps.

[martindow]

Originally Posted by Zombie Master

We resolve this by using a robots.txt in our main directory. It tells the bots not to search certain folders such as cgi and image.

I understand why you are doing this, but the downside must be that you are missing out traffic coming from Google Image search.

[zbatia]

I have to agree with both Zombie Master (we do the same) and with AcmeSEO. You may want to combine it where appropriate.

[Zombie Master]

Originally Posted by martindow

I understand why you are doing this, but the downside must be that you are missing out traffic coming from Google Image search.

It's not traffic we want, martindow. In fact, we have had numerous links to only our images in the past... helps little with car hire and hotel room bookings.

We don't mind the ecotourism traffic because we believe we are doing some good there without the income stream but in many cases our images were attracting only the curious.

I could go on at length with this but, of course, I won't. Oscar Wilde said a bore is someone who tells you everything he knows.

Slan go foill,

jk

[syd]

I use both graphic and text links on my pages.
I have been using nofollow on my image links for some time and have noticed no adverse effects on the pages where I do this. I read originally that google was the only engine that would take notice of nofollow but recently I have seen improvements in the referals coming from yahoo for no apparent reason. I did wonder whether they were now observing nofollow. Has anybody else seen improvements from yahoo?

[jawn_tech]

Use title and alt attributes on the image link.

It pretty much comes down to the equivalent of being seen as anchor text anyway.

Then you have two links with keywords as anchors.

There you go.

Originally Posted by syd

Has anybody else seen improvements from yahoo?

Yahoo supposedly follows the nofollow rule with ranking issues (keyword there is "supposedly"), but Yahoo does in fact spider nofollow links. Do a Yahoo search for link:www . example . com, if you have links from nofollowed blog comments, yahoo still lists it as a link.

[MrGamm]

Why wouldn't you just put an alt tag on the image? that alt text would be wrapped within anchor tag... then you'd have two links pointed at the content your promoting...

[morestar]

i think it's great to have many links to whatever pages you want your visitors to go to, it makes it easier having more than one avenue to get to the spot of interest. images sometimes make it clearer...

[thindenim]

Yes, I do exactly that in my shopping cart. 2 links, image and text link with a nofollow on the image link. It may, or may not have any positive effect, but certainly won't do any harm!

[AcmeSEO]

Yes Zombie Master, The Robots.txt is definitive but Site must have all images in the folder being disallowed. I often seen that not be the case. But yes, search engines are compelled to obey the robots.txt.

Robert
SEO Expert Search Engine Optimization Marketing Specialist

[qh4dotcom]

I haven't added nofollow to my image links

[hrvoje461]

I think that having alt and title tag on any image is good and I have it almost on all of my sites. I don't think that adding nofollow on image links will improve much weight on your text links.
By the way, on some of my sites I'm getting a lot of traffic from google images search.

[DVDStar]

Originally Posted by inertia

I've asked a similar questions before but the subject has come up again and I'm still debating the issue.

Question: Should you add "nofollow" to images that link when the text link equivalent is next to them? The theory being that this will place more weight on the keyword in the text link.

Any thoughts?

Ok so you mean like on this site, CD Duplication, DVD Duplication, Replication, London UK where you have an image with the alt tag "dvd duplication and replication", and then clickable links around the image with the same keywords. Then in your example you are asking whether the image or the text is the best thing to make clickable???
If so then I would say make the text clickable and just add an alt tag to the image. The image then backs up (i.e. reinforces the page copy).

....the issue of a no-follow is surely something completely different!? You use these if you dont want the search engines to index i.e. follow a link...typically used for "page rank sculpting".....
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Newbie SEO tips Blog - SEO For Biz (the seo blog the world loves...)

[inertia]

Hhhhm... So there is still no conclusive answer to whether or not it's worth doing. It makes sense to me in theory but what also makes sense to me is that Google will separate the text links on a page from the image links and treat them accordingly.

A quick question about alt and title. I always make my alt tags descriptive, with keywords if appropriate (e.g. "man playing with blue widgets"). I'm never too sure what to do with the title tag? Should this be keyword only? If the answer is yes then it would make sense NOT to nofollow the image but if the title and the alt aren't going to have keyword rich text then it would make sense that the image IS nofollowed for the sake of pushing the bots through the keyword rich text link.

Can anyone see my logic here?! (too much coffee after late night GTA4 session!)

[inertia]

Originally Posted by DVDStar

Ok so you mean like on this site, CD Duplication, DVD Duplication, Replication, London UK where you have an image with the alt tag "dvd duplication and replication", and then clickable links around the image with the same keywords. Then in your example you are asking whether the image or the text is the best thing to make clickable???
If so then I would say make the text clickable and just add an alt tag to the image. The image then backs up (i.e. reinforces the page copy).

....the issue of a no-follow is surely something completely different!? You use these if you dont want the search engines to index i.e. follow a link...typically used for "page rank sculpting".....
---------------------
Newbie SEO tips Blog - SEO For Biz (the seo blog the world loves...)

Hi DVDStar. Firstly, Amstore? Is that a site that you market/seo? If it is then I have just met one of my arch rivals! At my last company I did all the seo/marketing for xpress cds. We were constantly battling with you for the "cd duplication" number one slot!

I know what you're saying about nofollow not being used for such a purpose. It's a theory I was told by another SEO and I wanted to see whether people see it as a complete waste of time or worth doing.
(See my post above for the theory)