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The article is 6 years old, a just far to out of date in the seo world!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 -
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 -
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 -
Whatever Happened to Text Link Ads?
I've searched the web for any objective articles, good or bad, written about Text Link Ads or Text Link Brokers written in the past two years. Other than the occasional discussion board question, SEOs are silent about these services. I know back in 2006, Rand looked upon them almost favorably. But what has happened since then? Is there any legitimate use for these services anymore (as a link builder)?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 1000Bulbs0 -
Could a sitewide footer EXACT MATCH anchor text link hurt or potentially penalize a site?
I am pretty sure this would hurt rankings yet I just want another's opinion on it. Would a sitewide footer link with exact match keyword anchor text to the page you want to rank for your main keyword hurt you? Basically if it were a link to the homepage, yet you wanted to make the anchor text your main objective keyword, would it hurt to have this in the footer along with the logo link at the top of a page that is just "home" anchor text?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jbster130 -
I am still confused about anchor text and penalties
As I understand in order to rank well for the page in google, the page/site has to have a lot of back links that have an anchor text with the keywords that you want to rank for. At the same time if google finds that your anchor text contains kewords that are in your title or h1 tag, it may penalize your site. So what do i do to rank well for my chosen keywords. Lets say I am only interested in keywords San Francisco widget and Oakland widget The title of my webpage says San Francisco | Oakland widget The anchor text that I usually pick is either San Francisco widget or Oakland widget. I also have plenty of links that have anchor text like "website" or "click here" What should I use for my anchor text in my backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SirMax0 -
Beaten in SERP's by a site going 'all in' on 2 keywords in their anchor text profile.
I would like to get peoples thoughts on putting 80% of your anchor text links in just 2 keywords vs a nice spread of branded and longtail keywords.. like I am. recently fell off the first page for a key SERP.. and the site in P10 has gone nuts on just that two keyword's.. I know we have a good site onpage/ conversion / low bounce rate page views etc.. Pretty sure we get more traffic than them. Seems that this obvious bloated anchor text profiling has worked for them though.. What do you guys think/know?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | robertrRSwalters0