Image based content

Over the past two weeks or so I have been looking into the design structures of websites. Now that Search Engine Optimisation techniques are very popular it is amazing to see image based content appearing. Menus, sub-headings, information boxes and so-forth are essentially describing your website, by using images to display this information crawling the website would be very limited.

It is essential to try and adopt good practises when designing websites. The best policy is to try and use text based content where possible. If for any reason text is to be implemented within any image created, ask yourself is there an alternative way of displaying this information with HTML using <p>, <h1>,<h2> , <ul> and other HTML based tags.

Menu systems are always a major issue. Usually in web designed menus, image mapping is used. This should be avoided. Essentially the image may be linked but where is the anchor text associated with it? It is non existent and typically an non seo-friendly technique.

I have also come across an instance where catalogue pages have been scanned and used as static pages within a website. To get round this issue a HTML version of that page could of been easily created to make the page more readable. This would also decrease bounce rates because viewers are not waiting for the high resolution image to load. Next time your designer is considering creating images make sure any text is readable by search engine crawlers!

S.Whiston
SEO Programmer

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