Title attributes in your links

[ses5909]

I know Rodaniel uses them, but quite often I will forget to use them. Are you good about adding the title attribute in your links?

[SarahG]

I usually add them if I think a link needs it (and I remember!). If it's an affiliate link then I tend to just let users know in the title attribute.

The annoyance I found recently is that WordPress adds them into page links, however the title attribute is identical to the anchor text and therefore is just a waste, but I've not found a plugin that allows you to turn them off or alter them.

[davemcnally]

I will add them into each link if I remember :)

[Prettyfem]

I use title & description.

[rodaniel]

Hey, thanks for the mention, Sara!

I always include a TITLE in my hyperlinks - mostly because I'm hoping that there's some chance that the tooltip could provide a little extra value but also partly because it seems like a good idea to give the search engines every extra bit of information you can.

I also always use TITLE and ALT attributes in my image tags.

Seems like a hassle, but once you've become accustomed to doing so, including these additional bits of code has really become second-nature for. And I hand-code the links & image tags in my posts. I know that Blogger offer some helpful little wizards, but I'm a bit of a control freak. Plus I bang out most of my posts off-line...

[fatnewt]

I use the title attribute whenever the link text isn't clear enough (assuming I remember to).

For example, if in a blog post I had the sentence "They're covering this topic on their website, as well as in print.", and linked the words "their website", I would add a title giving the actual name of the site.

On the contrary, if the link's text was something obvious like "The Blog Experiment Forums", I think a title is generally unnecessary.

[rodaniel]

It's been a few months down the road since Sara brought this topic up initially, so i thought I'd give this a bump.

I'm wondering if any of you have had any luck with getting more consistent about including TITLE tags in your link and/or image code? And if so, have you been able to tell that this has made any difference to your readers or for SEO purposes?

[SarahG]

I do the same as before. A title attribute is used if the anchor text isn't clear enough, however there is no point (and it's not really nice for screen reader users who have the title attribute read out to them as well as the anchor text) if the title attribute is to be the same as the alt attribute or anchor text.

I've since written my own plugin to combat the duplicated title attribute for page links in WordPress, which means I can get rid of them completely if they're not needed, or give more insight into the link if necessary.

I can't see title attributes adding much to SEO. To me they're an accessibility/useability addition and nothing more.

[despatcher]

That's an interesting discussion.

I am pretty confident that title attribute in your href tags can end in an overoptimization. Majority of us use keywords in the anchor text, then you will obviously have keywords in the url, another set of keywords in title attribute.

Isn't it too much? I must admit I still have some old pages that use title attribute but I am going to get rid of it when I got time. Not only this is overoptimization but it also adds up to your keyword density.

However, it is good to use title attrib. if it doesn't contain keywords but you just want to point visitor's attention to something, for example, as SarahG mentioned, to notify of an affiliate link.

[indietravel]

I follow fatnewt's example: I only use them if the anchor text is unclear.

[Arwen]

I try to use them if I remember. For me its more of a accessibility issue rather than an SEO issue.