Using link TITLE attributes has become more popular since the rise of such widely used scripts as WordPress which by default duplicates the post title link in its TITLE attribute. Still, despite being the common behavior, this method of using TITLE attribute is both not right and annoying.

The title is not meant to be a duplication of the anchor text (related post: Image Alt Text Vs. Image Title). It’s supposed to provide additional / advisory information (expand on the meaning of the link). The anchor text is supposed to “name” the link, while the title text provides information about where the link will send the user. (especially with “click here” and “more” anchor text). Look:

<a href=http://www.searchenginejournal.com/”/ann-smarty/” title=”Author’s biography”>Ann Smarty</a>

OR

<a href=http://www.searchenginejournal.com/”/ann-smarty/” title=”More posts by Ann Smarty”>Ann Smarty</a>

Let’s first learn why we need to use TITLE attribute at all:

Link TITLE attribute for SEO: title attribute carries no weight on search engines (per my experience and based on other SEO’s opinion).

A couple of years ago, Googlers confirmed they did not use TITLE attribute in the algorithm because it was used too seldom. This has changes since then but I still failed to spot any evidence that link TITLE attribute somehow influenced the rankings (you can run a simple test: include any non-existent word - that doesn’t exist in Google index - as a link title, wait for the link to be indexed, and in some time check if either the linking or linked page got ranked for that word). Anyway, if your experience is different from mine, please share. (more…)

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 9:01 pm and is filed under SEM, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.