12 replies to this topic

[alan]

Many have said that it's a good idea to link all pages back to the home page.

Mine are linked back, but it's through a graphic with the alt text of "home"

Is that good enough? Or should it be through a text link?

[chrishirst]

It's enough.

[alan]

It's enough.

Thank you!

[Jill]

It's good enough, but having the alt attribute text be home isn't gonna do you any favors in the search engines in terms of rankings. Is there one particular keyword phrase that is all encompassing you could use there?

[qwerty]

If we're talking about the site in your signature, and the image at /images/index_03.gif, it doesn't currently have any alt attribute:

HTML

<td width="143"><a href="http://www.neuro-vision.us/index.html"><img src="images/index_03.gif" border="0" width="97" height="49"></a></td>

Now, since the image contains the word "home" that is a sufficient alt attribute, but you can get further benefit out of it as Jill mentioned. However, I'd say the word "home" has to be in there, no matter what else you use, so something like "weight loss hypnotism home" or "home: weight loss hypnotism" might work for you.

[hofman]

Hi I'm new to SEO and I have never heard this but Alan said "Many have said that it's a good idea to link all pages back to the home page."

Is that true or is it another hearsay like the first words in your title tag getting more weight. Just wondering

Thanks

[torka]

It's a good idea for usability. Human visitors expect to find a "home" link on the pages of a site and are often confused and frustrated if they don't / can't find one. Confused and frustrated people don't buy things from your site, they leave and find some other site that doesn't confuse or frustrate them.

--Torka

[Randy]

It's definitely a good thing to link back to your home page from every page on your site when viewed from the Users perspective hofman, which is plenty of reason to do it. It gives them an easy way to get back to the "beginning" of your site if they land on a deeper page.

From the SEO side of things a site's home page is often its most important page since it tends to garner the most incoming links from other pages. So if you can link back to it in a sensible way (for users) that also includes your most prized keyword phrase(s) it can have in impact in what the engines think your home page is all about. There are lots more bits that go into it (anchor text from incoming links from other sites, the copy, what you emphasize on the page, etc, etc) but making smart use of alt text in image links can certainly have a positive effect.

[hofman]

It's definitely a good thing to link back to your home page from every page on your site when viewed from the Users perspective hofman, which is plenty of reason to do it. It gives them an easy way to get back to the "beginning" of your site if they land on a deeper page.

My clients website is made up of categorical listings so we always have the categories on the side which links back to the homepage. I was wondering if those categorical links don't get as much weight so should I put another link in the content of the site??

THANKS for the help!

[Michael Martinez]

I would not use "home" as the alt text, but rather descriptive text telling people what your home page (your site) is about. The best use of internal anchor text is to associate your most important keywords with their respective pages, doing so in such a way as to inform your visitors (remembar that ALT= text has an actual purpose and is not there simply for search engines).

[seopatroldelta]

I would say it could not be that appealing for both users and search engines to have "home" as an Alt attribute. Alt attributes are the ones that explain physically blind users to know what the image or link is about. At the same time, having a keyword/phrase in the alt tag adds weightage to the page. When your page is really relevant to the keyword you target, you may have that keyword in Alt tag which would make the page more relevant to the keyword in the search engine point of view.

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Sunny

[alan]

At the same time, having a keyword/phrase in the alt tag adds weightage to the page. When your page is really relevant to the keyword you target, you may have that keyword in Alt tag which would make the page more relevant to the keyword in the search engine point of view.

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Sunny

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I did have the "home" in the alt text, but not on the home page itself, on all of the other pages. I'm going to add the title of the home page to the alt text for the home graphic on all of my other pages. I like the idea of having weight loss hypnosis | stop smoking hypnosis home on another 175 links!

[Jill]

weight loss hypnosis | stop smoking hypnosis home

IMO, that's too much and too spammy.

If you're going to do this it needs to be just a very short phrase and that's it. (Again, imo.)