HTML: Making a image visible for search engines as text?

[hpkeeper]

I work for a doctor and he's asked me (with the little HTML knowledge I have) to
be the webmaster for our company website. Which itself is pretty primitive.... however at the top of the web page is a company logo, an image file, which has been causing problems when a browser searches for our company (supposedly).

I'm not pleased at all, as the original site was done mainly with microsoft frontpage. Which if you work for microsoft and are reading this... take a hike, your program sucks. I've since re-written most of the pages with Dreamweaver MX and at least a variety of web browsers can read it without difficulty.

The company name is Retina Consultants with the company logo replacing the "R". So right now as it reads, apparently the best search for our business is resulting when "etina consultants" is searched for on search engines. If you want to check the site out, I haven't uploaded the old page it's http://www.retinaconsultants.org. For those of you who use firefox --don't bother -- use IE... that's the only way you can navigate the page =/ .... again... many thanks to frontpage.

So how do I make that image readable to a search engine as an "R"... if it's possible?
if not, what is my next best option? Meta tags?


my next question is that on that same page, there is a navigation bar with rollovers on it on the left. Is there a way that I can have it preloaded so that I don't have to reload that navigation bar every time you go to a new page on our site?

Please let me know... I'm about to poke out my own eye...

 

[troytime]

you can't really make a graphic appear as text for search engines.

Replace the whole text (etina consultants) with an h1 tag containing the whole business name (retina consultants)

use some css to position the h1 text offscreen and place a graphical logo in its place (graphic logo will contain all the text, not just the RC)

for the left nav, replace the graphical buttons with text links

 

[skrilla]

Here may be a quick possible solution. You could try replacing the code:

<td align="center"><font size="6"><font color="#F7F2D2">R</font>etina
Consultants</font></td>

With:

<td align="center">
<style type="text/css">
h1{font-family:times new roman;font-weight:normal;font-size:32px;padding-top:15px;}
h1:first-letter {color: #f1f2d2;}
</style>
<h1>Retina Consultants</h1></td>

It looks like they pretty much use the full phrase "Retina Consultants" and just change the "R" to match the background. This would be a quick fix - slightly dirty, but not bad. To be honest, that code is so bad I don't think it will make too much difference.

 

[hpkeeper]

Yeah, like I said.... that's microsoft frontpage for you.... all sorts of quirky BS muddle to sort through which also like I said, makes it impossible for you to look at the page while in any browser other than IE. Forget even looking at the code. If I could post what I currently have for a page in its stead, I'd show you what I've got.

*EDIT* - Skrilla when I tried out your code, that seemed to work on the page that I've been editing. The "r" does not show up, so what do I do now? just place the image in front of the text "Retina Consultants"?

 

[troytime]

in other news, the google crawler is reading the full text, its not stopping due to the R being in a different font tag

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Woah, flashback to 1996!

 

[hpkeeper]

...yeah you like that code?

...that's what I had to start with....


I wish I could show you what I have after cleaning it up... somehow.


Edit:What if I created the whole "Retina consultants" as an image file with the logo replacing the "R"... would the page still be read as Retina consultants say if I Did a meta tag description with Retina Consultants being like the first few words?

 

[Onund]

How are you testing that the search engines are reading this correctly?

Not sure but I thought alt tags would be picked up by the search engines. So if you do like you said, make the entire title an image and include 'retina consultants' in the alt you should be covered:

<img src="someImg.jpg" alt="retina consultants">

Also, you have the name in the <title> tags no? Shouldn't all this help?

 

[troytime]

seriously, what are you trying to do?

if you're worrying about SEO, you're focusing on the wrong stuff (mostly)

how many people are searching for 'retina consultants'?
if you want it to be text, make it all text using an h1 and use css to move the text off screen and put the logo where the h1 would be
fatwallet.com is one example of this, i'm sure there are easier code snippets to sort through though

 

[911paramedic]

HTML portion. (Put whatever other markup around that, <h1>, <h2>, etc., just enter what I have below as it is between your other markup.)

<span class="logo">R</span>etina Consultants.

This is in your header or stylesheet:

<style type="text/css">
.logo
{
background-image: url(images/logo.jpg); /* <--edit that to your correct image name and path */
text-indent: -9999px;
}
</style>

Edit your css (the above snippet) as needed to get the logo in the correct position with margins, padding, floats, etc.