Hover texts for hyperlinks
-
I've seen certain websites upon hovering your mouse over the hyperlink, text is displayed. Concept is similar to the IMG ALT tag.
Do you think there is value when it comes to hyperlinks? It's already an anchor link.
Thoughts?
-
The link title element is not known to be a significant ranking factor. In fact, stuffing this attribute with keywords might even have the opposite effect.
This is one of those cases where you ask "what's best for the user?"
-
Yeah, if you have other things to concentrate on I would do them. Personally I'd only do it as a UI point.
Good luck
-
Thanks Adam,
It seems the general idea is to not see it as a priority but it's an unknown territory. No one is a 100% sure.
I'm going to leave it out for now, there could be webmasters stuffing titles with keywords thinking it has a benefit and that might be an area Google will come down on with an update.
-
Hi there,
There was a question on this a while back by the Moz community. Some respected people were answering that question. It seems the consensus was little if any.
http://moz.com/community/q/does-the-link-title-attribute-benefit-seo
Although it might help with context for the search engines....
Try this aswell
http://www.googlewatchblog.de/wp-content/uploads/rankingfaktoren_google.jpg
Adam
-
The article is 6 years old, a just far to out of date in the seo world!
When I first started on "seo" I found a 2007-8 article on link sculpting you site Nav with No follow. Then after doing a ton of work applying this to the the site Nav I found out it all changed in 2009, and it was now a terrible Idea!
-
You're right, I do feel the link titles are more of a hidden element that isn't necessary. If the copy is linking to another page, naturally the text should flow into it and the anchor text should do its job of informing the user about the page.
I did think having it might backfire and SEs would start thinking i'm keyword stuffing.
Didn't think about touch screen devices, great point.
-
If the user needs to read the title text to understand the link then you've probably got your anchor text and context wrong. Using them just to get a few additional keywords in your copy isn't going to help and might actually act as a distraction/source of confusion for users...
... and touch screen device users find it hard to hover.
-
Now that I know what they are "link titles", I was able to find this old (but useful) article on moz
Link Title Attribute and its SEO Benefit
http://moz.com/ugc/link-tilte-attribute-and-its-seo-benefit
The comments section really fleshes out some good points even if the article is 4 years old. Recent comments SEs don't consider title, hmm...
-
Little if any I would have thought, but to be honest I have never looked into it. Think it of it as a tool tip, giving a bit more info for the user. If it helps the user then use it, if not then don't
edit: Here is an old topic asking the same thing (hope that helps)
-
Any SEO value in adding it though? What do you think? Will it just lead to stuffing?
-
The value your looking for is "title" eg:
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Inbound links with malicious anchor text. Negative seo attack
Hi, What to do with more than 300 links with a malicious anchor text that has nothing to do with my content. I am disavowing those links for the last 5 years. Some of them are directed to URLs that have been changed more than 8 years ago. How can I block this malicious behavior? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
Keyword in alt text or keyword in the body?
lets say i have 2 percent keyword density in the whole page and another 2 percent are coming from alt texts from images? is that 4 percent, am i exceeding the limit or its fine?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Linking Anchor Text is simply "." what is the purpose of this?
I have several backlinks with high spam scores. The anchor text as listed is either just a period, or it says there is no anchor text. These links don't generate traffic and there is no way for me to contact the website owner. Is this a case for the Search Console Disavow Tool?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Harley.Helmer0 -
Managing Inbound Anchor Texts
Hey all, I have a web-shop selling server hosting and my home page has over 5000 inbound links from my customers. My question is that most of these have the same anchor text to my homepage which links to my homepage META tags and a few keywords there. Is this good practice? Should the anchor text vary per customer and if so how? I would say no as this is too difficult to manage and doesn't add to the 'user experience' if it does vary but always good to ask others!! Also, as the customers aren't totally relevant to my own product (although the anchor text is) would this also be hurting my ranking? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | darrenbooy0 -
Exact-match anchor text
I have the opportunity to have a link from a high DA, trustworthy, relevant site to a key product range that I am optimising on my website. The link will be in an article. I have one very simple question. Should I use exact-match anchor text?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AHC_SEO0 -
Is horizontal hashtag linking between 4 different information text pages with a canonical tag to the URL with no hashtag, a White Hat SEO practice?
Hey guys, I need help. hope it is a simple question : if I have horizontal 4 text pages which you move between through hashtag links, while staying on the same page in user experience, can I canonical tag the URL free of hashtags as the canonical page URL ? is this white hat acceptable practice? and will this help "Adding the Value", search queries, and therefore rank power to the canonical URL in this case? hoping for your answers. Best Regards, and thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
Text indent -9999px on logo, is it bad??
I saw a question on this forum that was saying that text-indent -9999px was bad SEO, or even worse blackhat seo... But isn't it what everyone is doing for image replacement in logos...? Is it really bad?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | i-kreo0 -
Anchor text penalty doesn't work?!
How do you think, does the anchortext penalty exactly work? Keyword domains obviously can't over-optimize for their main keyword (for example notebook.com for the keyword notebook). And a lot of non-keyword-domains do optimize especially in the beginning for their main keyword to get a good ranking in google (and it always works). Is there any particular point (number of links) I can reach, optimizing for one keyword, after what i'm gonna get a penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheLastSeo0