You're wasting half your internal links on images with no anchor text. That's a silent equity drain.

You're wasting half your internal links on images with no anchor text. That's a silent equity drain.

Unpopular opinion: an image link passes equity but speaks through alt text — and you almost certainly left it as "thumbnail-2847.jpg" or blank.

So your card-grid blog feed, your logo-link, your featured-image links are all firing equity at targets with a mute or garbage anchor. The flow happens. The meaning doesn't.

Every image link needs descriptive alt that reads like the anchor you'd choose. Or pair it with a real text link to the same target placed first in source.

Who's audited alt text as anchor text? Almost nobody. Be the exception.