The Underscore Archives

2009/12/8 Jon Free <jon at tangymedia.co.uk>:
> Just had a request from a client that I wanted to get a general opinion on.
> I think it's a stupid idea but don't have enough facts to ruin the idea.
> They are trying to fix the ratio of words on the homepage in an attempt to
> make these words perform better. The site has a main menu made up of
> standard text links, no images or background images at all. They have
> requested that we rebuild the menu using images to replace the actual text
> within each link. Their thinking being that these words are diluting the
> ratio of other more important words on the page.
>
> Does this seem a bit far fetched? Surely there are vast numbers of sites out
> there with menus like this that have awesome SEO regardless.
>
> I would really appreciate any input.

If you do what's been suggested, you'll make the menu inaccessible to
users of Assistive Tech (screen readers etc.). Not a price worth
paying, IMHO. Plus, the text in the in the menu links *are used by
Google* to determine the content and meaning of the pages they link
to.

So, there's a (possible, far-fetched) gain in terms of keyword
density, and a (definite) loss in terms of helping Google understand
your site.

Cheers,

Tim