Text links vs Image links

[shield]

Ive heard quite a few people say that text links are supposed to work better than image links.

Is this true because they both make use of the <a href tag and therefore in theory souldnt they be the same?

[CannonBallGuy]

Unless the image has an alt tag there is no way for a bot/spide/anything-not-human to understand where the link is taking you....
So, a link with the words "free web hosting", bots and whatnot know its taking you to a free web host.
With an image, it cant tell... maybe with an alt tag on the image it can...

^ I think.

[shield]

ye thats what I read about but wasnt sure if it was true - I guess it is considering thats two people who have never met ahave the same answer :)

[daniellegehman00]

Since image links are significantly harder to design and manage, I would stick to text links. They are more efficient to create and manage and produce almost the same results. But image links are also very important in terms of branding and advertising. Choose wisely.

[eric123miller]

Text links are important both in terms of getting quality backlinks and good SERPs. However, image links are also very important in terms of branding and advertising if you are running an ad campaign for the site in order to do internet marketing and business promotion. Image links are fine as long as you put it the ALT text.

[melissaford2]

Most all links pass value. Its the level of value that is in question. A textual link is at the top of the food chain, it doesn't get any better than that. image links are okay and perform well. image links that are formatted properly and utilize accessibility attributes like the alt attribute are going to perform better than those that don't.

image links merged in with <h> elements do extremely well.

[Alex_WoodOO2548]

Text links with related content is what I read and what seems by far to get the best results. Image to image links has been a failure for me. Trying text to image links and hope for improvement.
The content of one sites has many images. It took six months before any of my images showed up in any of the major search engines. Only the text links showed as a valid url.
I find image searches fairly useless when it comes to finding a site I really want to visit. Lot of work needs to be done in this area by all of the search companies. It’s just my experience and yours may differ. Would like to know.

[marvinmike97]

My vote goes to image links.
Image Links- Are more noticeable.
According to normal human behavior, images get first noticed by visitors.im This is the reason they tend to attract more traffic as compared to a text link.

[katymahannah056]

Apart from the merits, image links has some downsides to it as well. As compared to the text links, they take more time to load that sometimes annoy the users so much so that they simply leave the site and never want to return.

[HDawn07]

Well Image Links can be used to build even more links and have potential to go viral in a fantastic way. For instance, an image especially when it says something funny, is more likely to circulate quickly among all users. Reading something hilarious with the use of image makes it more interesting. The image is tend to get linked with tonnes of people through text, using social media.

[ishuvonet]

Well both works if you can optimize them well in a proper way.