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I just asked a SEO question on Stack Overflow and it was closed in 3 minutes because it is off topic. Does Search Engine Optimization not involve programming?

The question was about replacing text from buttons with images to reduce the keyword importance.

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    Link to the question?
    – Bart
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:29
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    Hmm, okay. Most SEO questions are usually not programming related and thereby off-topic. It would be good to see if you perhaps asked a question which requires a programmatic solution.
    – Bart
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:31
  • Your question might be a better fit for Webmasters, though the user experience of replacing button text with images (which is bad btw) is a topic for UX
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:37
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    Why is it off topic? Because it's off topic. What does SEO have to do with programming?
    – Pekka
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:38
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    @tsergium: how did you manage to delete it? You can't delete a closed question yourself unless it's been closed for 48h AFAIK.
    – Mat
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:40
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    FYI, the relevant tag wiki explicitly states: "Non-programming SEO questions should be asked on network site Pro Webmasters - webmasters.stackexchange.com !"
    – Bart
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:41
  • @bart yeah, but this was a programming question after all, just a poorly put one. People sometimes make hasty on-topicness suggestions based on some keyword they see in the question. That's what happened here IMO - and is probably the reason for so many bad migrations
    – Pekka
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:56
  • I think i'll draw a diagram to show an example and ask this again
    – tsergium
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:58
  • @tsergium yeah. I think there is no way to do this with images though: if you replace text by an image, it becomes untranslatable for in-browser translation tools. Maybe it's better if you describe your situation and what you need this for. Do you want to actively hide content from search engines? I could see a Javascript based solution work better for that.
    – Pekka
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:59
  • @Pekka I agree. Merely quoted it for the more general "why are SEO questions off-topic" question of the title.
    – Bart
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 11:00
  • All I want is to replace a text like "View this" with something not seo friendly, but to do this dynamically, like, if the text is "View" or "Voir" (french) to still be able to apply the same process.
    – tsergium
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 11:01

1 Answer 1

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Your question was (10k users only):

Dynamically replacing text with image

I need a method of replacing text with images while keeping the text translatable.

"off topic" was indeed the wrong close reason here; the correct one would have been "not a real question".

On Stack Overflow, we expect questions to be specific, answerable technical issues. In its current form, your question is a mere code request, and a very poor one at that. You're not being clear what text should be replaced how, you are not mentioning any details and what you have tried. It is off-topic on all Stack Exchange sites.

To answer your question though - do you want to use custom fonts on your web site? There are better and more SEO friendly ways to do that nowadays than rendering images; see How to add some non-standard font to a website?

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  • The question was about replacing text (because it is not SEO relevant but appears a lot on the page) with an image (like Cufon does) but Cufon is SEO friendly and I don't want that.
    – tsergium
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:48
  • I will try asking for this on webmasters.stackexchange.com, if that does not work I give up.
    – tsergium
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:50
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    @tsergium this question is on topic on SO, but explain in detail what you want to do. Tell them what you just told me, and explain what you mean by "translatable". Translatable by who? Google Chrome's live translator? I could see a JavaScript based solution for that
    – Pekka
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:51
  • I tried twice to ask this on SO but failed
    – tsergium
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:52
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    @tsergium that's because you didn't provide enough detail. You need to start using more words. :)
    – Pekka
    Commented Oct 22, 2012 at 10:53

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