Alt and Title Attributes in Anchor Tags
-
Does it hurt to use alt and title attributes inside an anchor tag? Example:
-
That was a good catch Alan and Ryan, I just looked at the Alt and Title and did not even notice the example used them in an anchor. Doh! I would only ever use them in images. Since I develop on the Microsoft platfrom using it anywhere other than img flags a syntax error.
-
Everyone's partially correct. Alternate attributes are for images only. Title attributes in anchor tags can be used in links, however if you are performing SEO best practices, using title attributes in anchor tags is a first signal that you are probably spamming the search engines if not used with extreme caution.
Why? Because the anchor text (the text you wrap the anchor tag around) should suffice to communicate what you're linking to. Title text in anchors is best left to only be used when you're using them as a place anchor on a page, not as a link.
-
To clarify: Alt attributes should not be used in anchor tags, but titles can be. For a full list of anchor tag attributes see: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_a.asp
-
Agreed.
-
Quite the opposite, these are very desirable if used for their intended purpose.
The Alt tag is for accessability handling, so it helps people with visual disabilities to understand the content of a picture.
The Title tag is used to provide tooltip information to the user when they hover over the image.
Both these enhance the user experience as thus are looked on favourably by Google.
BUT, it's an important but - seo's in the past would stuff these tags with useless spammy content. e.g. You have a automotive business so the alt tag:
'car gmh fast cars sports cars red cars porsche' that is bad.
'Our new sporty red porsche makes an easy ride through the windy roads of Denmark' - good
The title tag could say 'Porsche 911 2005 touring the roads of Denmark'
It's all about adding value to the site for the user not manipulating the search engines. So, use alt tag to describe the item in detail and the title to provide extra details. Do not have the same text in both as they have different purposes.
Hope that sheads enough light on the subject.
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
-
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
Meta tags in Single Page Apps
Since the deprecation of the AJAX Crawling Scheme back last October I am curious as to when Googlebot actually reads meta tag information from a page. We have a website at whichledlight.com that is implemented using emberjs. Part of the site is our results pages (i.e. gu10-led-bulbs). This page updates the meta and link tags in the head of the document for things like canonicalisation and robots, but can only do so after the page finishes loading and the JavaScript has been run.When the AJAX crawling scheme was still in place we were able to prerender these pages (including the modified meta and link tags) and serve these to Googlebot. Now Googlebot no longer uses these prerendered snapshots and instead is sophisticated enough load and run our site.So the question I have is does Googlebot read the meta and links tags downloaded from the original response or does it wait until the page finishes rendering before reading them (including any modifications that have been performed on them)
Technical SEO | | TrueluxGroup1 -
Google is shortening many of my title tags although they are already quite concise
Hi, Title tags of our website are being truncated by Google even though they can be very short (sometimes < 40 characters) and with very few capital letters. We would like to understand why. Example: Principal component analysis (pca) in abcde - OurBrand shows up as: Principal component analysis (pca) in abcd... - OurBrand where abcde is the name of a very common software (5 characters), and OurBrand is a 6 characters long string (could be used in either lower case or upper case). Even when removing the brackets around pca, truncation still occurs... Any clue why?
Technical SEO | | trigaudias1 -
Duplication in Meta Titles
Hi,
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate
In order to appease the Moz crawler we recently changed over 10,000 URL's in order to make our Meta Page Title less than 55 characters as it suggested. Unfortunately our rankings dropped dramatically pretty much overnight so I am getting the feeling that perhaps our titles are now just a little too concise and need elaborating on just a touch. Our competitors that rank well seem to use a small amount of keyword repetition. For example, whereas we may have:
Brother DCP-197C Inkjet Cartridges They will have:
Brother DCP-197C Inkjet Cartridges. Cheap Brother DCP-197C Ink. What are your opinions of the fact that: a) Their Title is over the 55 character figure that is suggested for displaying correctly in the SERPs.
b) The words Brother and DCP-197C are repeated in the title. The fact their title appears to be working better is almost enough to sway me but the competitors title just looks a little too spammy for me to make a sitewide change without asking some second opinions first. Cheers all!0 -
Swapping key phrases in URL, Title and H1 tag
I was wondering if swapping key phrases would still work in URL, Titlte and H1 tags For example: <code>Car Sales Melbourne Sales Car Melbourne carsalesmelbourne.com.au salescarmelbourne.com.au</code> So the second key phrase would you be able to get similar effect with correct key phrase or if location is different, would this not work at all?
Technical SEO | | Jae830 -
Issue Duplicate Page Title
I'm having some really strange issues with duplicate page titles and I can't seem to figure out what's going on. I just got a new crawl from SEOMOZ and it's showing some duplicate page titles. http://www.example.com/blog/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/2/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/3/ Repeat .............. I have no idea what's going on, how these were duplicated, or how to correct it. Does anyone have a chance to take a look and see if you can figure out what's happening and what I need to do to correct the errors? I'm using Wordpress and all in one SEO plugin. Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Why do I get duplicate page title errors.
I keep getting duplicate page title errors on www.etraxc.com/ and www.etraxc.com/default.asp, which are both pointing to the same page. How do i resolve this and how bad is it hurting my SEO.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Updated title tags not displayed in SERPs?
A couple weeks ago I updated the title tags and URLs of some of my site's top landing pages, but the new versions aren't indexed in Google. Webmaster tools says that my site has been crawled since updated. I'm using a pretty old version of Joomla for a CMS, and had to fight with the plugins a little bit to make it all work (sh404SEF for the URLs and sh404SEF Custom Tag Module for the title tags). For example, www.radiussecurityinc.com's indexed title is still: Radius Security Solutions | Home But should be: CCTV System Design - IP Industrial Surveillance | Radius Security Other pages besides the home page have the old title tags as well as old URLs. Any ideas how I can fix this? Thanks a lot in advance! Jeff
Technical SEO | | jaysan0