11 replies to this topic

[ThingsAtHome]

Hi Guys.

This is my first post after just having watched the brilliant SEO course on Lynda.com. Thanks for such an informative introduction to SEO; I'm really looking forward to overhauling the existing SEO on our site and hopefully improving our relevance for our customers.

I have what is probably a pretty basic question.

When using href tags, is it better to have the title attribute set the same as the name of the link, or should it use a different keyword phrase? For example, which of the following would you consider to be the best SEO?

<a href="http://www.thingsath...om/blogs/news/" title="Come on over to our home, craft and cooking blog!">Come on over to our home, craft and cooking blog!</a>

<a href="http://www.thingsath...om/blogs/news/" title="Our craftzine and homewares blog!">Come on over to our home, craft and cooking blog!</a>

Any and all advice gratefully received!

Charlee x

[Jill]

Hi Charlee, glad you liked the Lynda course!

As to your question, since the search engines ignore the information contained in the Title Attribute of links, it makes no difference to them how you do it.

Hope this helps!

(BTW, I fixed your signature to conform with Forum Rules.)

[ThingsAtHome]

Great, thanks so much Jill! Apologies for the signature faux-pas.

[VinceSutton]

Personally i use both tag.... TITLE and ALT tag for my link and images.

[chrishirst]

ATTRIBUTES!! not "tags"

http://www.candsdesi...tes-and-values/

[Jill]

Personally i use both tag.... TITLE and ALT tag for my link and images.

You're welcome to use them, but the image title attribute has zero SEO influence.

[qwerty]

I only use the title attribute on the rare occasion that I want a tooltip. IE is the only browser that displays the alt attribute in a little popup (although I know some people use a Firefox extension that causes it to do the same thing), but all of the browsers I know of do that with the title attribute, and IE will display the title rather than the alt if it's present.

But as I said, it's something I rarely do, because I find that few links and/or images really call for a little tooltip to pop up. I only use it when I want the user to have some information about what they're about to click, like if I'm linking to a page that's in another language. If you're using the alt attribute properly, I don't see why you'd want to copy it into the title, because I don't see why you'd need a tooltip announcing that a picture of a red ball is a picture of a red ball.

And if I can take this opportunity to whine a bit, I hate what the current version of Firefox is doing with image file information. It used to be that you could right-click an image and select Image Properties, and you'd get a dialog containing the file name, its size, its dimensions, and its alt attribute. They've replaced that with "View Image Info" which, while it contains access to information about all of the images on a page instead of just one, presents "associated text" instead of specifically the alt attribute. That associated text is either the title or the alt -- they don't bother telling you which, so they're treating the two attributes as if they served the same purpose.

[ThingsAtHome]

ATTRIBUTES!! not "tags"

My bad, I meant attributes, of course. My (web designer) husband constantly tells me off about that.

And if I can take this opportunity to whine a bit, I hate what the current version of Firefox is doing with image file information. It used to be that you could right-click an image and select Image Properties, and you'd get a dialog containing the file name, its size, its dimensions, and its alt attribute. They've replaced that with "View Image Info" which, while it contains access to information about all of the images on a page instead of just one, presents "associated text" instead of specifically the alt attribute. That associated text is either the title or the alt -- they don't bother telling you which, so they're treating the two attributes as if they served the same purpose.

Amen. To be honest, it'd take quite a while for me to list the reasons I hate Firefox these days. I swapped to Chrome as my main browser some time ago - even with it's teething problems - but I still feel like a traitor to Firefox for leaving!

Thanks for the help everyone! xx

[SEOPeace]

Until those are in html/xhtml specifications why not use it. It will not hurt you definitely.

[kalidust]

ATTRIBUTES!! not "tags"

http://www.candsdesi...tes-and-values/

Amen!

If the title attribute is used, it is redundant to have the same text in it as the link text, especially for those using screen readers that are configured to read the title attribute. The title attribute is suppose to provide supplementary information.

[torka]

I only use the title attribute on the rare occasion that I want a tooltip. IE is the only browser that displays the alt attribute in a little popup (although I know some people use a Firefox extension that causes it to do the same thing), but all of the browsers I know of do that with the title attribute, and IE will display the title rather than the alt if it's present.

I also use it, after a fashion, on the (frequent) occasions when I don't want a tooltip to pop up.

Such as when I've got a graphical menu item and I've used the same text as the graphic for the alt attribute (for accessibility purposes) and it would just look silly -- not to mention being potentially pretty darned annoying -- when somebody mouses over the menu button to have a tooltip pop up with the exact same text that a visual browser can already see.

So I put whatever text is necessary in the alt attribute for each graphic, then include a blank title attribute (title=""). It suppresses IE's display of the alt attribute as a tooltip and doesn't seem to have negative effects in any other browsers I've tried. Haven't tested it with the Firefox extension, but I hope it would work the same way -- and, frankly, why somebody would want to write and/or use an extension to make FF emulate wacky IE behavior ON PURPOSE is beyond me, but different strokes for different folks, one supposes.

--Torka

[Jill]

So I put whatever text is necessary in the alt attribute for each graphic, then include a blank title attribute (title=""). It suppresses IE's display of the alt attribute as a tooltip and doesn't seem to have negative effects in any other browsers I've tried.

Nice tip!