Using titles in links... useful or useless?

[moshimoshi52]

Example: <a href="dairyfarms.html" title="Directory of Dairy Farms in the US">US Dairy Farms</a>

Does the use of title="" confer any SE benefits? I kind of hear pros/cons for them.

Thanks!

[stymiee]

Use them. They're good for usability and accessibility and may have a tiny bit of SEO value, too.

[HAWK]

Out of interest, what cons have you heard?

[charlesgan]

its the trend as i see, yes, use that.
in wordpress, you can assing the title on every link created. its nice to have a indicator for user as well.

[EJ]

I like how a little box pops up usually describing the link I'm going to click, which would be the title tag in action (I think?) So I think it's quite a useful thing for users.

[Ar3d]

yes.. it would help it recognized by the search engines..

[felgall]

Anything that helps describe what the link is about will help visitors in deciding whether it is the link they are looking for. Since search engines are trying to identify useful content they will also be able to classify the destination page better from that information.

[hooperman]

Originally Posted by felgall

Since search engines are trying to identify useful content they will also be able to classify the destination page better from that information.

Except that they don't (according to my testing).

Good to include for your users, though, as has been mentioned.

[sheena]

Using titles in link can confer search engine benefit. Use title to improve seo of your site.The title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines to help you target and attract your visitors. Nearly all the major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title one of the most important pieces of information when determining what the content of your website is. The title is displayed in the visitors browser window usually at the top of the viewable part of the browser screen.

Originally Posted by moshimoshi52

Example: <a href="dairyfarms.html" title="Directory of Dairy Farms in the US">US Dairy Farms</a>

Does the use of title="" confer any SE benefits? I kind of hear pros/cons for them.

Thanks!

[si@ld]

I can see the benefits from a usability perspective, especially when using image replacement in CSS. Hiding the copy, displaying a background image but still making the link accessible. I can not see the benefit from an SEO perspective, because unless its an exact copy of the contents of the link, wouldn't that be class as spamming?

I use them, but only to reinforce what is the content of the link.

Si .

[hooperman]

Originally Posted by sheena

Using titles in link can confer search engine benefit. Use title to improve seo of your site.The title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines to help you target and attract your visitors. Nearly all the major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title one of the most important pieces of information when determining what the content of your website is. The title is displayed in the visitors browser window usually at the top of the viewable part of the browser screen.

I think you are confusing title tags (<title>Your Page Title Goes Here</title>) with title attributes (<a href="dairyfarms.html" title="Directory of Dairy Farms in the US">US Dairy Farms</a>).

As far as I have seen, the title attribute is ignored by search engines.

[stymiee]

Originally Posted by sheena

Using titles in link can confer search engine benefit. Use title to improve seo of your site.The title is displayed in web search results by the vast majority of search engines to help you target and attract your visitors. Nearly all the major search engines use a title tag in order to rank your page. Search engines deem the title one of the most important pieces of information when determining what the content of your website is. The title is displayed in the visitors browser window usually at the top of the viewable part of the browser screen.

Wrong title.

[aspen]

Debating this is relatively silly.

It something everyone should do for accessibility purposes anyways, so if you should be doing it, does it matter if SEs index the text? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It'd be easy enough to test (though I haven't done it, because even if they didn't I'd still use the TITLE attribute).

[Webnauts]

Title attributes do not affect your rankings in anyway. As Stymiee said above, they are valuable in terms of usability and accessibility.

Google says though:

A lot of pages use the title attribute on a elements, which is good.

Source: http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/element-a.html

Therefore, I recommend using them.

[Rebirth Studios]

I can not see the benefit from an SEO perspective, because unless its an exact copy of the contents of the link, wouldn't that be class as spamming?

So if used, is it best practice to name them slightly different than the text link or does it matter?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Rebirth Studios

So if used, is it best practice to name them slightly different than the text link or does it matter?

Well as links have to be any way descriptive, I suggest using the title attribute for an extended description about the page you are linking to, and to be more specific, I use the title tag of the page I am linking to.

[hooperman]

Originally Posted by Rebirth Studios

So if used, is it best practice to name them slightly different than the text link or does it matter?

Not sure what 'slightly' means, but it defeats the purpose of the attribute if you make it the same as the anchor text. It should be used to give additional information about the linked page.

[Rebirth Studios]

Ok, thanks

[AJKock]

Looking at usability, SEO and how Google values things, I am starting to reason that somebody misunderstood when they thought that the text in the link gives the description for the link to Google (for SEO purposes).

I will explain why. J Nielsen mentioned the use of title tags years ago as good usability. Now supposedly, Google looks at the text in the link itself to describe the destination page. Now think about this:

If you link text in your document "five star hotel" to a spesific product, "five star hotel" will say more about the product, but WHAT product? (from the user's perspective). It means users have to click on different text links and they will end up at the same product (because SEO wants to "improve" their ranking). This is not good usability because it means I have to remember all these "keywords" to get back to a product. Actually this is horrible usability. Looking at Google's history I always find that they support good usability and the web visitors first. The aim afterall for their search results is to get the best results to their users. That is why good content for websites are so important.

Therefore I think someone misunderstood link text. It makes a lot more sense if the text Google will look at to "describe" the destination page is taken from the title tag, than it is to take it from the text that is linked.

[hooperman]

Originally Posted by AJKock

It makes a lot more sense if the text Google will look at to "describe" the destination page is taken from the title tag, than it is to take it from the text that is linked.

Why does it have to be one or the other? There is more information to be got from both anchor text + title attribute than anchor text alone or title attribute alone.

But we can talk all day about what the search engines should do. What they do do matters more (to me anyway ), and they don't appear to be using title attributes.

[AJKock]

Because if the linked text is for example: "The Davidson Hotel" and the title text is "Five Star Hotel", the user get the benefit of seeing his link goes to "The Davidson Hotel" (spesific) and not any other hotel (general). Using specific, Google can then deduct that "The Davidson Hotel - a five star hotel". Working with general words, Google has to ad all the keywords together from various pages AND look at the content, title of the page, etc. etc. to get the same result. Which one you think is more effective.

But yes you are right. We are speculating. But does it sound logical to you?

[hooperman]

Originally Posted by AJKock

But yes you are right. We are speculating. But does it sound logical to you?

Not really, because you are only considering the case where the title attribute is (possibly) more useful than the anchor text. The title attribute is a bit of a misnomer, really. The anchor text itself is more like the title and the title attribute is more like the preface in my opinion.

[AJKock]

I am concidering the fact that anchor text would be the keywords that you want to be ranked high on, which in theory will only be "general words" as there is only one spesific keyword and that is the product name. Anything else is just descriptive words of the product, therefore the text links will just be general.

[hooperman]

Originally Posted by AJKock

I am concidering the fact that anchor text would be the keywords that you want to be ranked high on, which in theory will only be "general words" as there is only one spesific keyword and that is the product name. Anything else is just descriptive words of the product, therefore the text links will just be general.

You are making big assumptions about what people are putting in their anchor text and title attributes.

If you have this link:

<a href="zzz" title="Created November 2005">Free web icons</a>

What would you want Google to look at - the anchor text or the title attribute? Yes, it's a contrived example but there will be lots of real life examples where the title attribute is meaningless in isolation.

As I said before, the title attribute is used to provide additional information.

[stymiee]

This is a perfect example of how not knowing fundamental HTML and how that affects people's understanding of SEO.