Text Links vs. Image Links. This is not a new concept. In fact, I debated about writing this post simply because of its elementary SEO level. However, The reason why Im writing this post is because a) I was recently tested on this SEO foundations level question and b) there are still many people learning SEO today and can teach them how to create SEO Friendly websites. In this post, I’ll provide an example of how a images within your website can be optimized using a combination of CSS and SEO basics.

Recently, I was tested on how I would optimize a catalog page on a website. The page was comprised of 12+ image-based links. At first glance, each link 1) had the text as part of the image and 2) switch when you hovered your mouse over it. So, my solution was use a technique that incorporates an Image Replacement Technique (read Mezzoblue on this technique) which does away with using an image tag within the link structure and replaces it with anchor text and then using CSS display the image in the background. But, after viewing the source code, it was easy to see that these links were more complex and that screen dithering can be deceiving.