Editor note: “Ask an SEO” is a monthly column by technical SEO expert Jenny Halasz. Come up with your hardest SEO question and fill out our form. You might see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!
Today’s #AskanSEO question comes to us from Bryan in East Brunswick, N.J.:
Are internal links through pictures (click picture, not text) SEO friendly? Are there any positives/negatives of one over the other?
I am currently using Yoast Premium and several pages on our site had alerts for either zero or too few internal links, which lead me to believe the program is not registering the pictures with URLs. Would Google ignore them as well?
Most SEO programs don’t register image links as internal links because they are generally perceived to have less value than text links. This isn’t always the case, though.
Google does their best to understand the content of an image. While a stock photo isn’t going to carry much weight, an original infographic might.
My general rule of thumb is to only link an image to another page if it is used as:
- A reference for another document or post.
- An icon or companion image for a navigation link.
- A technical chart or graph that needs to be zoomed in.
If you do link an image, be sure to use a relevant caption and ALT text, as both of these signals can indicate to search engines what the image is about and why it is there in context.
Also, don’t forget that it is best to optimize images regardless of whether they are linked, especially providing relevant and descriptive ALT text.
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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita
