linking images to hm page or page itself

I was told or read to not have any orphan images on your pages. Does it
make a difference for internal link etiquette to either link the image back
to the page itself or to the home page?

In message <YhJib.101458$eS5.13584 (AT) twister (DOT) tampabay.rr.com>, Articus
<artmccarty (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> writes

I was told or read to not have any orphan images on your pages. Does it
make a difference for internal link etiquette to either link the image back
to the page itself or to the home page?

What is an "orphan image"? I suspect, from your second sentence, that
you mean an image which is not a link to anything. I can think of no
reason for avoiding such images. I would not expect every image to be a
link, any more than I would expect every word of text to be a link.

Some people use "orphan images" to mean images which are there on your
web server, but not actually used in any page. It is a good idea to
delete these, if only to save disk space.

Nick
--
Nick Wedd nick (AT) maproom (DOT) co.uk

"Articus" <artmccarty (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

I was told or read to not have any orphan images on your pages. Does it
make a difference for internal link etiquette to either link the image
back
to the page itself or to the home page?

There is no point linking the image back to the same page, unless you want

to reduce the proportion of PR going out on links to other pages. Since PR
is now of low importance, this is a non issue. You could use images to jump
to various paragraphs within the page - that makes sense.

It is a good idea that all significant images should be links. This means
the alt text gets properly indexed in the images database and people will
then find it much easier to find those particular images when they search
for them. (Note the text either side of the image is also indexed) Also,
the targeted page gets its proper ration of anchor text keywords added to
it. Alt text on an orphan image is only of benefit to the human reader and
provides scope for explanatory notes to pop up if you hover over the image.
Alt text on an orphan image is not indexed and just dilutes all the other
words on the page by increasing page length which reduces you position in
the search results. I added loads and loads of alt text explanations to
every image on a page and also added several acronym tag expansions thinking
it would make facinating reading and avoid having to have write subsidiary
actual pages explaining the pictures and abbreviations. It then went down
from 13 to 73 search position. None of the explanatory text words were
indexed.

Images are a useful way of writing a word which you do not want indexed.
e.g. in cases where a page has the same repetitive text over and over again
like in a page with say six recipes, each with 5 ingredients, all listed
with x gram against each one. You do not want the page top of the search
lists for "gram" just because it has 30 copies of the word "gram" on the
page. You would, incidentally, depress the real wanted searches for say
"christmas cake recipe". So in this case make a small gif image of the word
"gram".

Best regards, Eric

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 22:21:52 +0100, "Eric Johnston"
<eric.johnston (AT) blueyonder (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

Since PR
is now of low importance, this is a non issue.

Since when?

I know some people in forums go on about this type of thing all the
time, and so it becomes 'fact', but that doesn't make it fact.

I've seen no evidence of it being true, in fact quite the opposite,
everything I've seen points to PR being one of the main factors in
good SERPs.

If it had changed I'd expect my main site to fall like a stone, but
it's stayed near the top consistently the last 6 months or so.

What you should be looking for is high PR links using keyword rich
anchor text.

David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 10/10/2003)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123...-optimization/