Does the title attribute affect CTR?
-
I've been trying to find some research or studies regarding the title attribute on links and if it affects CTR or perhaps another benefit to using it. I know that it's not a factor in search engines and there's some problems with the compatibility of it in various devices and browsers, but looking for any stats that show using could affect your CTR. Would love some actual studies versus opinions, but haven't found any.
-
With that sort of sample per month you should be able to get some interesting data from tracking the clicks from links that have a title and comparing to links that don't.
Peter
-
Yea, that's what I was afraid of since it is such a minor thing. Was hoping someone may have given it a go to see what it would do. Maybe I'll run my own study on the impact of CTR and see what I come up with. Getting around 600,000 visits a month so hopefully that will be a big enough audience to come up with some good stats.
-
Hi Ben,
I don't know of any specific studies. From a usability point of view there is no question the Title attribute could have an impact on CTR. A well written and helpful title could encourage visitors to click a link the title is associated with, and a badly written one could dissuade them.
As such a small part though of a page and often not used at all, I doubt there are any studies.
There is an older blog post on Moz discussing them though which you may find useful:
http://moz.com/ugc/link-tilte-attribute-and-its-seo-benefit
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
I changed my home title and meta description but on google, i still see the old title and meta description. Whats the problem here?
I basically changed the title and meta description of my homepage and when i search on google, it still shows old. Whats the issue?
Search Behavior | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
SEO For A Title Company?
Has anyone ever had success with doing SEO for a title company? The owner of our law firm has one, and I'd be happy to work on it, but it just doesn't seem to be cost-effective. From my experience, title business goes to people who personally know the realtor; no one who actually has a say is "googling title companies." But, if I'm wrong, I'd love to hear it and any experiences you want to share. Thanks, Ruben
Search Behavior | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is putting/removing Adsense ads on the site affects crawling for seo?
Because I noticed when we totally remove Adsense ads on our site, the pages crawled per day on the google webmastertools suddenly dropped into noticable amount and we tested again to turn it on for a singe day, it jumped up again. So if Adsense affects crawling then, if we have adsense ad on all pages of the site the more chances it gets crawled by the bot? WS76R8w
Search Behavior | | CruiseControl0 -
Testing Your Homepage Title Tag
It can be a scary thing to change your homepage title tag to get the best results in the SERP while also maintaining your rankings. You obviously want to be irresistible and clickworthy… so how much time do you give before changing it up to test again?
Search Behavior | | BeTheBoss0 -
Is a Shorter Page Title Better?
Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?
Search Behavior | | nwright0 -
Google Is Displaying An Alt image tag as my homepage's page title
Google is randomly displaying the alt image tag as the page title for my homepage. It happens when you search for the brand name, but the page title appears as "BrandName Logo" (obviously not "BrandName"). Has anybody seen this happen before?
Search Behavior | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Studies on influence of meta description on CTR
After having answered quite a lot of questions here, I figured it was about time to ask one of my own. Can anybody point me to decent (experimental) research articles or blogs that actually show variations in meta descriptions influence the Click Through Rate (CTR) of searchers? On dozens of websites on the internet it is stated that 'meta descriptions affect CTR', but (good scientific) sources for those statements are nowhere to be found. The only research I can find that comes closest to providing any evidence is a translated study by dynamical.biz, which states that searchers LOOK a lot at the meta description, but this study (atleast in the translation) mentions nothing of searchers actually CLICKING it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Search Behavior | | Theo-NL0