Does the title attribute for links really matter in SEO? For example: <a href="example.php" title="Example Page">Example Page</a> Code (markup):
Yes they do. It helps search engines identify the keywords you're aiming to rank your website for. Its often done for offsite SEO when people build links but some do it as onsite SEO as well. That is known as deep linking, where inner pages of a website are linked on the homepage with certain keywords and phrases.
Thanks for the input. I will give it a try on a couple sites and see what happens. First, is it better to have the title attribute the same as the anchor text or different?
ALT attributes on images are important for W3C validation but the title attributes on links aren't so that was where my question came from. Now I'm on the fence again about doing the title attributes. Do they hurt if I do them?
Google uses the ALT attributes to help determine what the images are about and then rank them accordingly. That's how it relates to SEO. As for title attributes, I don't know why people think it has any effect. I haven't seen any test results to show that title attributes would matter. Also, all well-known SEO experts seem to agree that title attributes have no weight for ranking purposes. No reason to be "on the fence" here. They don't hurt, but they don't help either.
AGreed with Miroslav, title attributes does not effect your search rankings. What matter is Anchor Text.
Personally I don't use the title attribute. It doesn't help me to rank at all. Your link should have a proper anchor text and that's enough, no need of spammy title attibutes But ALT for images is a must!
IMHO, you should use both alt text on your images and title text on your links, regardless of the SEO impact. Search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms and increasingly they focus on usability and well developed, thoroughly coded HTML that puts the user first. Having sensible title text on links offers a better user experience in most situations, especially if you are taking the time to do it right and not simply stuffing keywords in there. Make them useful. Google may not look directly at title text, but the DO look at usability and whether users hit your site, take a look at it and then hit their back button to find something better. If you are satisfying your users and offering them the content they are looking for with the least amount of spamminess you will do better over the long term than simply doing SEO on your site all the time. If you focus on writing good content that targets your keyword space without going overboard you should do well and your rankings will rise. Search engines will notice that you do a good job of satisfying your users' needs. If your site is irrelevant or is simply SEO fodder it will eventually do poorly regardless of the effort you put into SEO. There's no silver bullet in SEO. It's a long term process. Also, in regards to title attributes, there are other HTML parsers out there besides search spiders that are trying to decipher your content and which may be looking for things like title text, meta info, microformats, RDFa and other things that SEO experts say are irrelevant in your code. People who specialize in pure SEO might not have an interest in these things because they don't have a measurable quantifiable impact, but they could very well affect how your site ranks, or appears in search listings as well as getting you automatic inclusion in directories that parse this other data which will then indirectly affect your rankings and overall site visibility. Very few people actually know what the search engines are up to behind the scenes. One day Google could tweak its algorithms to look at one of these factors and your site could end up either at the top of the rankings or the bottom of the rankings while you scramble to figure out what went wrong rather than focusing on the content your users are looking for. I say, be thorough. Use all the tools at your disposal to provide the best experience for both humans and machine parsers. I don't do SEO for a living I do web development (since 1994) and SEO has always been a part of that. My sites always rank well and when they get ranked, they stay ranked. I have one site ranking in the top 3 for a highly competitive search phrase that I haven't touched in over 7 years and that still ranks in the top 3 on Google due to work I did close to a decade ago simply writing good copy and other typical SEO stuff. The people running that site now just sit back and make sure it stays updated with relevant content and watch the money roll in. The sites I work on now are competing in even more difficult keyword spaces and do equally as well against very stiff competition. Just keep at it, do good work providing content and using all the xhtml specs properly and don't build spammy crap sites. Trying to figure out whether to use alt text or title text is just missing the point...use them both if there's a reason that benefits the end user. That's my two cents.
@minorgod Thank you for your two cents. Your post was very informative and I'm thinking I will start using the title attribute since it probably can't hurt SEO. Might be old fashioned but hey, some crawlers like old fashion coding.
I think the anchor text is more important than the title attribute in a link but I think is good to have all the proper attributes because you never know what Google will do
Most or all of your images should have alternative text (the alt attribute). The alternative text describes your images so they can appear in Google and trade Images search results. It's always a good idea to check the images on your website and make sure effective ALT text is specified for each image. Good luck! -PlonkaInteractive