When doing links, there is the title attribute, like: <a href="http://www.example.com" Title="Examples Galor">Examples</a> Code (markup): Does that title there help with SEO at all? I hope it goes or else I've wasted a lot of time.
Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org said to me in an interview that the title tags are the most important ranking factor in organic search engine optimization. Now whether he meant that or <title>blah blah</title> I'm not sure.
In the context, he must have meant the actual title; the link title is surely not in the same class of importance as the page title.
Checkout this article on ranking factors, http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors it ranks title tags as being 4.7/5 in importance, placing it at the very top. Make sure to set the site to "show the rest of the comments" so you can read what all the various experts have to say about each factor.
Less of an assumption, but more of a contextual joining the dots ! won't you agree ?! If someone said, XXXX Title is one of the most important SEO factor = you'd be correct in guessing XXXX = Page ; and that wouldn't be an assumption; that would be answering from experience!
keyword = computer blog <a href="http://www.computer-blog.com" title="computer blog">computer blog</a> Code (markup): add more value to the link cauze the keyword make it more relevant for search results
Only if search engines index the link attribute - which they don't (according to my last test). You should be using appropriate text in your title attributes for users, though.
I've never heard of it making a difference. The truth of the matter is that content and what you actually see on the page makes the most difference.
The title attribute will give the link you have tagged anchor text, that is all the title attribute is there for when it comes to titling links. So, title = anchor text, the page title is a whole different story, that is found in the header of the pages and is considered the most valuable of all attributes on a page.
Nobody answered my question! Should I use the title attribute in linking? I'm NOT talking about the page title! I gave an example in my topic post!! Somebody help me!
I think you're talking about anchor text, I'm talking about title attribute. How come nobody will give me a straight answer!
I asked this awhile back - Title Attribute for <a> tag and International Web Developers Network did an experiment: Do Search Engines Index That which might help out some.
GOOD LINK Corey, and cuts through a LOT of the bullshit being spewed forth by a number of so called SEO 'experts'. Some of their results shouldn't even have needed testing - visibility:hidden and display:none for example should have NO impact because search engines pay ZERO ****** ATTENTION TO CSS. Likewise the two DHTML examples show what's been known about that forever, DHTML is NOT content and as such is NOT indexed. (DHTML, Ajax, pick a ****ing name, it's still using javascript to write out content and as such an accessability /FAIL/) Their exalead results are also readily explainable - exalead usually rejects words that are not in the dictionary... since their 'test' phrases were all gibberish, they were ignored. But yes, the title attribute (Not the title tag) like a great number of other attributes mean exactly two things to search engines - and Jack left town, took his **** with him. Natural text within your anchors will do SO MUCH MORE for search results than any cutesy trendy attribute... and if you use natural text you shouldn't NEED a title attribute in the first place.... In general ALL html attributes (as shown by that test) are ignored over actual CONTENT. But as with the whole sick SEO fad (which is what a lot of people are using it as) people are looking for ways to make up for a lack of semantically marked up content and to hell with writing clean coherent copy and having page content people will want to not only visit, but revisit. You'd think the web was being taken over by click-through advertising link-whores or something. Ah heck, I'm giving rep just for that link.
Thanks deathshadow. Paul (the_pm) really did a fantastic job of breaking everything down and helping to explain it. (I was just curious about the <title> attribute as well, but he went a lot further and hopefully it will help more people.)