Title attribute of hyperlink tag

[Optimist5]

Do you use Title attribute in A tag? Will Google consider Title at all when there is an anchor text there?

[weegillis]

SE's do see the title attribute in an 'a' tag. The attribute can best be used to indicate the target of the link. Two possible usages for OB links are, 1) the TITLE element on the target page, and, 2) the domain of the target. On internal links, the short name of the target page should suffice; eg.

<a href="/" title="Home"><img src="/images/logo.gif" alt="ABC" /></a>

The title attribute should not be populated with ALT text, but target oriented text, imho.

[createdevelop]

target oriented text, imho.

To put this another way, if you are looking at links from your home page, the title link is best used as the name of the page it is pointing at. And yes, Google does consider title attributes.

[Tiggerito]

As the title is shown in tool tips, I tend to use it to provide more details about a link, image or even area of a page.

e.g. with link text of "About Us" I might have a title saying "Learn more about xxxxx and our philosophy".

I was under the impression that title attributes are ignored by search engines. I may be wrong?

[peskyhuman]

I just observed a rather heated discussed on another forum about titles - it seems the jury is out on whether search engines take these into account. Certainly some page testing sites still use them.

My approach to titles is that they are essentially "tooltips" and as such should be written to be of maximum use to the user. So that when a user hovers their mouse over them they get a useful piece of text that informs them as to what clicking in that particular spot will do. Of course my assumption here is that titles are essentially for user benefit and if the search engine is taking into account titles it will be looking for their usability factor.

Like a lot of this though, unless you actually work in search engine design this is all best guess and hedge our bets theory!

[Optimist5]

It's amazing that there is no info if Title is used in SEO. I imagine it is possible to test if it is or not. We need a good ranking website and add/change Title on a bunch of "a" tags pointing to the main page to include keyword not used on website.

[weegillis]

As mentioned earlier, TITLE on A is intended for USER not SEO. It is an indicator of CALL TO ACTION. This attribute is not intended for keyword stuffing, especially keywords that are not relevant to the target document. Stuff it with keywords and you may as well stick in a REL="NOFOLLOW" for all its effectiveness in SEO.

[morestar]

So the question would be, if the following two sets of code related to a site-wide link unit, and the keywords were dental marketing and dental websites which of the two is more conducive to a successful SEO campaign?

<div id="navigation">
<ul>
<li><span class="nav-text">Visit Our</span><br /><a class="left-nav" href="/">Home Page</a></li>
<li><span class="nav-text">We Perform Qualified</span><br /><a class="left-nav" href="/dental-marketing/">Dental Marketing</a></li>
<li><span class="nav-text">We Create Converting</span><br /><a class="left-nav" href="/dental-websites/">Dental Websites</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

or

<div class="nav_wrapper">
<ul id="navigation">
<li><a id="nav_marketing" href="dental-marketing/" title="We Perform Qualified Dental Marketing">Get Targeted Internet Traffic</a></li>
<li><a id="nav_websites" href="dental-websites/" title="We Create Converting Dental Websites">Conversion Website System</a></li>
<li><a id="nav_home" href="/">Home</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

I will say right off the hop that it's obvious it's the first block but if you debate this please do...also I've removed other non-related links such as contact and about us...

My main positio is that by using the keywords as the anchor text you are removing as much ambiguity as possible with respect to what the keywords actually are for the linked-to page. The second block isn't too clear and although the second block could win in the SERPs (more/better links in) it wouldn't if the first block had the same more/better links in too...

[morestar]

Yes I'd say it's highly un-healthy...

[weegillis]

One should bear in mind that very often screen readers won't read the title attribute...

When Verbosity is set to 'none.'

Under severe conditions much of the web experience is lost.This is the flip side of the accessibility coin.