Is graphical content really death for SEO?

[st_hart]

For SEO purpose, we are encouraged to have text-based content instead of graphical content. I know search engines cannot crawl graphical content. This heave content also annoys visitors as it makes a websites load slower. But, I think graphical content in appropriate portion is OK. I don't mind being presented nice graphical work on the internet. It's a work anyway, right? But why doesn't it deserve high PageRank

[jimbo]

I think that if you have a fast loading page which is normally light on images then it can help your site in the SERPS and will improve visitors satisfaction.

[sheprd]

A quick way to find out is to Google 'payday loans' and look at the top results. This market is highly competitive and you will notice the top sites are NOT graphic heavy, but text oriented! Cheers -

If you want to get where your competition is, first copy what they are doing and then do it better, that is seo at it's finest!

[tonyknuckles]

Always to a keyword related tag to any images you add to article content. Makes your post very search engine "sticky".

[radinfo1]

It depends on what you mean by graphics.

If it is a photo, name the photo with a keyword, use the alt text to include the keyword as well. Include a good meta description and text to describe it. Many people don't automatically load images.

If you are talking about flash or other video type material, there are things you can do to improve the SEO of the page.

Include a transcript on the page to get text available. Describe the video in the same way Youtube does to the search engines.

The search engines don't see things the way we see things. They can interpret text to give you relevant results. Without text they don't have a way to rate and evaluate your material.

So if you provide graphics always provide a text equivalent to make sure the search engines can understand it.

[cathy_duncan]

I don't think that graphical form of content is death to SEO, provided if it is digitally designed. You can have example of Google books, as most of them are digitalized version that search for the keywords and highlight them when you find them. In't it?