Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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The article is 6 years old, a just far to out of date in the seo world!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
-
Does Google only show high rankings to webmasters?
Hello! I'm using Google Chrome browser. On the browser logged in with the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is ranked on pages 1 to 2. However, in the case of the Google Secret tab and other browsers that have not logged in to the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is only 10 pages. Which one is more reliable?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 1kB_man_YWH
Does it only show higher rankings to webmasters?
Or will you soon be able to see the high ranking that has only been seen by webmasters in other browsers? I desperately need your help. Thank you. I look forward to your kind cooperation.0 -
Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages? Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time? Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Fisher0 -
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 -
How to fix site breadcrumbs on mobile google search
For past one month, I have been doing some research on how to fix this issue on my website but all my efforts didn't work out I really need help on this issue because I'm worried about this I was hoping that Google will cache or understand the structure of my site and correct the error the breadcrumb is working correctly on desktop but not shown on mobile. For Example take a look at : https://www.xclusivepop.com/omah-lay-bad-influence/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ericrodrigo0 -
What is the proper URL length? in seo
i learned that having 50 to 60 words in a url is ok and having less words is preferable by google. but i would like to know that as i am gonna include keywords in the urls and i am afraid it will increase the length. is it gonna slighlty gonna hurt me? my competitors have 8 characters domain url and keywords length of 13 and my site has 15 character domain url and keywords length of 13 which one will be prefered by google.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | calvinkj0 -
Malicious backlinks
Hello to everyone! We have identified some weird links that are pointing to our site and we are not sure if they are considered malicious backlinks and we should disavow them. Most of them are directories of websites, the most common one is called "Top million domains by alexa" (you can see an example here: www.besafe.in/domain-list-237). Have you ever seen these kind of links before? Are they causing harm to our site? Thank you so much!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xaviplabor0 -
Pinging Links
Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it. Is it considered dangerous/spamy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman100 -
Sky Lancers: What is the deal?
For a few days now we are being stalked by a "referrer" site out of Bangladesh, called sky lancers dot net. Their home page is nothing but a login and password. All traffic comes from one invisible inner page. They don't seem to try to login, nor do they use PPC to get to the site. They send thousands of visitors a day. Anyone has any idea what this site is trying to achieve and what their goal may be? All they do is get the bounce rate to skyrocket, the time on the site to go down and the avg page views of course to go down as well, as they click out immediately after they hit the homepage. Any suggestions on what to do about this practice? And what are they trying to achieve? Thanks for your insights guys!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Discountvc0