Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Search engines ultimately rank on content.  Text obviously connotes content and most grpahics don`t unless you`re using them as an illustration.  The fact that most graphics on websites are pop-up ads or banner ads certainly doesn`t help their case, but many spam/typosquatter sites primarily use text.

The dirty secret, at least with Google rankings, is that perhaps the most important factor in SEO are the sites who link to you.  The higher those sites are ranked, the higher you`re ranked.  This way, spammers can`t just set up fake sites to plant links.

Execute..
The only thing the seach engines "Bots" are worried about is: content... text, text, text and how relevant your content is to the Keyword they searched for. Whether you have graphics or not, it doesn`t matter... But you can include this on your code <img name="enter a brief keyword"> and then follow it up by the alt ="describe your image" this is text, and it is content.
Also, the more hyper-links you have the better.. Find resources that link to other relevant pages, for example: let`s say you are selling a Sony TV, include a Link to the SONY web site, this helps alot. But don`t worry about  using graphics. Graphics are friendly too... Stay away from Flash though...

Hi Ken,
Well, in SEO, there are two major components:  keyword rich content and quality inbound links. I think most of the experts have mentioned what I`ll say here again. 

Flash is detrimental to top rankings as search engines cannot read flash.  Even with W3C compliance and alt tags inclusion, I generally discourage heavy usage of flash when I work with clients to build sites.  If a client has or wants a flash intro page – I usually have it removed or discourage its use.  I think that flash is good for aesthetic appeal but does it really generate new business? Besides, its only nice the first time you see it – most times people just want websites to ‘get to the point’.  But I digress - lol.

The last point that you make is related to ugly text only sites.  I believe that there are ways to create aesthetically appealing sites that are SEO friendly. There has to be a right balance of graphic usage and text area.  See some of our in-progress work where there’s a lot of room for text: http://www.work-files.com/marketingprnetwork/, http://www.work-files.com/frenchcosmetics/version2/, & http://www.work-files.com/mnminternet/

The usage of graphics should also be limited for other reasons such as quicker download times - remember - quite a large percentage of users are still on dial-up connection. We don`t want to lose them just because they couldn`t load the site up.

In conducting successful SEO, finding keywords that are relevant and popular but yet not too competitive is the most important thing.  Then initiating link building to get relevant links is another. 

However, there’s much more to SEO than just those two things and therefore I always share with potential clients the need to put a comprehensive online marketing program together.  Just like it is done in traditional marketing, companies don’t stop doing marketing after sending out flyers one month, do they? Online marketing has to happen on a monthly basis because you may on the first page today and drop off the top rankings within days if not hours.

Hopefully this helps – my apologies for another long winded message but you did ask for ‘expert’ opinion – lol.

Take care….. 

Hi

 Basically Website depends on the content. Google prefer the content and yahoo  prefer the images.

thanks.

 I agree with this.