SEO Questions

[Engage]

Hi all, thanks for your help with a couple of SEO questions.

1) Would Google see pages within a subdomain any differently than pages within the full domain?

If I create pages within a subdomain, does Google see them as pages on my site? If I link to pages within a subdomain, does Google see this as links to my site? Do subdomains matter in regards to search engine rankings?

2) Is there any SEO difference between a text link, and an image link with the same link text in the alt tag?

Your opinions on these matters are appreciated, thanks.

[masonworld]

1. Generally, no difference. See Matt Cutt's PubCon commentary from 2007. This impacts the "hostcrowding" algo, but otherwise does not have an impact.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdom...ubdirectories/

2. Sure. They are completely different. But I am not sure that I understand your question. Different in terms of what?

mark

Hi all, thanks for your help with a couple of SEO questions.

1) Would Google see pages within a subdomain any differently than pages within the full domain?

If I create pages within a subdomain, does Google see them as pages on my site? If I link to pages within a subdomain, does Google see this as links to my site? Do subdomains matter in regards to search engine rankings?

2) Is there any SEO difference between a text link, and an image link with the same link text in the alt tag?

Your opinions on these matters are appreciated, thanks.

[Engage]

2. Sure. They are completely different. But I am not sure that I understand your question. Different in terms of what?

Oops, sorry for the confusion.

Would an image link with alt text have the same SEO value as a text link with the same link text?

Here's a concrete example. I noticed a competitor of mine has convinced about 1,000 sites in his niche to link to him. They are linking to him with a small button image in the sidebar of their site template. Some of these sites also have other similar buttons in their sidebar. In other words, these webmasters seem to like the tidiness and aesthetic appeal of buttons.

If I accommodate this preference, and give them an image button to link to me with, will the incoming link be of less SEO value?

Or is a link a link?

I can't see a reason why an image link would have less SEO value, assuming the image had alt text. But that's just an uninformed guess, I really don't know.

Thanks.

[masonworld]

Ah. Now I see.

When you said "image link" -- I was thinking you meant "image tag"

Now I understand that you mean that there are images on other sites that are hyperlinked back to a site.

Your question is what is the SEO value of these image hyperlinks compared to text hyperlinks.

So, the real truth is I don't actually KNOW. But, I can speculate. When it comes to Google, that is pretty much all you can do (speculate and test).

Hyperlinked images definately contribute to SEO (and you can get traffic from click-thrus). That is the main reason that people do these "badges" that you see. Sometimes, "badges" are required for access to a site/freebie. That is why.

Most people argue that image links with optimized alt text have SIMILAR SEO POWER.

Here is a decent article on the topic.

http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial...t-optimization

HTH.

Mark

[MikeF421]

I agree with Mark on this one.

It is widely believed that the alt text acts pretty much the same as the anchor text of a text link.

If image links have the same weight as text links... it's really anybody's guess, but I wouldn't see any reason why Google would discredit them over any other type of link.


As for the subdomains, my experience is that there is SEO benefit to interlinking between them, but I cannot say with any certainty whether or not those links carry the same weight as an external link from another domain. Search engines look at them similarly to pages on any other site.

There is SEO benefit to interlinking pages on the same site, and the same goes for subdomains.

[Engage]

Thanks guys, many thanks for the advice, much appreciated. Ok, it looks like I'm cleared to do what I want to do. Onward...