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The article is 6 years old, a just far to out of date in the seo world!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 to internal search with pharma spam anchor text. Negative seo attack
Suddenly in October I had a spike on inbound links from forums and spams sites. Each one had setup hundreds of links. The links goes to WordPress internal search. Example: mysite.com/es/?s=⚄
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
Best seo benefit location ( main page text or h1 , h2)?
i have learned that h1 has more value than h2 and h2 has more than h3, but lets say if i want to place my keywords in there. should i include them in the main body or should take advantage of header tags?
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 -
Huffingtonpost selling anchor text backlinks?
I found this article on huffingtonpost.co.uk http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-maclachlan/top-5-most-influential-ma_b_3682369.html In the 2nd paragraph it has the words "mannequin retail displays", linked to a site that sells mannequins. The link has nothing to do with the story and it seem ( to me a least) its been paid for. Looking at other old posts by the same author its does not seem to be a one off: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-maclachlan/celebrity-honeymoons_b_3962560.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PaddyDisplays
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-maclachlan/cruise-holidays_b_3898661.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-maclachlan/five-of-the-worlds-most-important-rivers_b_3761599.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-maclachlan/the-top-4-manliest-jobs-in-the-world_b_3694431.html I'm just surprised that a site as big as the huffington post selling back links in this way0 -
Sure, but what about non-keyword rich anchor text links?
Could spammy non-keyword rich anchor text liks help your website rank? Of course, there's been a lot of discussion around Google's update of its link scheme. Specifically, they target press releases with do-follow links on keyword-rich anchor text and "Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links". Well, that leaves the question unanswered, what if you're doing these spammy linking techniques, but on non-keyword rich anchor text, such as "click here", "find information", and "click here". Will you still get smacked down by Google then? Given that links on non-keyword anchor text can still help increase domain authority, it seems like Google left a door open here for large scale publication of a certain class of spammy links that can still assist rank, no? Also, in answering, please distinguish between best practice, and effective. For instance, purchasing links isn't a good practice, but it can still be an effective technique. While spammy links on non-keyword rich anchor text is certainly not a good practice, is it nonetheless effective?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Branded Anchor Text, Exact vs. Non-exact Match Domain
Hello, For NLPCA.com, when you search for "NLP California" in Google,the letters "nlp" are bolded in the SERP URL and so is "ca". See here. This is because "ca" is an abbreviation for "California" Thus, this is not an exact match domain but it is close. What should our branded anchor text be? I want to change the anchor text profile to 98% branded anchor text. The 3 names our company goes by are NLP California NLP Institute of California NLP and Coaching Institute Let me know if we should not use one or more of these names for branded anchor text.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
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