Hi Everyone!

I hope not to start another big debate over the "doorway/cloaking" issue!

Personally I believe pages should be designed carefully and keywords placed in context of the content. If they are the issue becomes a non issue.

Now to contradict myself... I also believe that a Picture is a thousand words. I am not interested in trying to "cheat" the search engines but at times... either myself or a client feels that too many words on the page detracts from the page... but search engine uses text to rate a page. The page is totally revelant but requires no text... well no text for the user but text for the search engine.

I have developed what I call "info pages" for the search engines that are completely visible, but, my biggest concern is with the main index page of the site as this is usually what the search engine spiders read first.

If I would like a very clean index page with few words... will this detract from possible high rankings on the search engine?

How can I use only a few words on a page but still have it recognized as very revelant to a subject?

I thank everybody in advance for your assistance in resolving this dilemma I face

Warmest regards

A picture may well be worth 1000 words. ... and of course you would like it to have highly relevant content. However this all begs the question - Who are we talking about? Does your target group consist of very similar individuals? Are they likely to have similar tastes and similar ways of understanding words and interpreting images?

Both for text content and for image content, I think it is important to have a target group in mind. The only way to test what information content they get from a page is to do tests with sample individuals from your target group and measure their reactions. You'll soon be able to resolve your dilemma in very practical terms.

bwelford

Thank you very much for your reply.

I totally agree and to answer your question most of the market wants photos and not text on this particular site.

It is a photographers site and in general not much text is required. It is the photos which are going to sell the photography company.

Hence not many words are required on the main index page. This leaves the search engine and the target audience requiring two completely different things.

Any suggestions??


Again thank you for your response and in advance for further comments

Warmest regards

How can I use only a few words on a page but still have it recognized as very revelant to a subject?

Links and anchor text. Many pages rank well for keywords they don't even have on the page, some pages have no text content and also rank well. The trick is to get many pages relevant to your industry with high page rank to link to you. And not just any link, but links that use your keywords in the link text. A page that has no text but many authoritative links pointing to it with the anchor text "widget" will probabily rank well in google for the word "widget".

HTH

I would believe this is more on a website architecture issue as opposed to text vs. imagery issue.

"Just pics' doesn't sell as good 'pic' and background information of 'pic'.

You can have a fall foliage pic, mountains as a backdrop, sunset painted sky with a calm flowing stream in the foreground... while the pic may indeed convey the scene far more elegantly than a ton of words describing the scene there is lots that the picture doesn't and can't convey.

Where is the scene? Rocky Mountains, or half way around the globe.

Who took the pic?

Why did they take the pic?

What historical or cultural facts are associated with the 'data' of the pic?

The pic on the page can be displayed as a thumbnail that opens to a full screen new windows...

Nonethe less - 'text' is important and you don't need doorway architecture to service ranked results - just more information that the pic cannot convey.