Does Link Title help with SEO?

[cgo85]

Does having a link title such as (<a href=�asdf.html� title=�1234�>aasdfhlkj</a> help with seo?

[Shawn]

My opinion is that it does help, just don't keyword stuff it.

PHP Code:

Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive              and accurate.
 Source: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html 


I have it on my links: http://www.uncoverthenet.com

Also remember that seeing impared people use a mouse that will convert your links to words via text-to-speech software. So if you keyword stuff your title tags, it would look pretty stupid!

[Papadoc]

It more than helps. It is critical in highly competitive areas. In my opinion, the closer your keywords are to the beginnning of the title tag, the better.

Also don't just use only a single keyword in the title. Make it a real title and make sure that those words are used as much as reasonably possible on the page within the text. If your title is "Blue Widgets", and you talk about blue widgets but never use the term, your title probably won't count for much.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Papadoc

It more than helps. It is critical in highly competitive areas. In my opinion, the closer your keywords are to the beginnning of the title tag, the better.

Also don't just use only a single keyword in the title. Make it a real title and make sure that those words are used as much as reasonably possible on the page within the text. If your title is "Blue Widgets", and you talk about blue widgets but never use the term, your title probably won't count for much.

I think he meant the title attribute (title="xyz")..not title tag (<title>). But good advice

[cgo85]

Yeah... I'm talking about the title attribute. Does anyone have proven success with this? Like some of the keyword phrases showing up in the SERPS or something.

[longcall911]

If you choose to use the title attribute, I would suggest you do so very conservatively to start. I assume you want to get your on-page keyword density higher, so use great care. I’ve tried loading my links 3 times now on the same site. I intentionally over loaded to see just what would happen, and at one point I dropped from #25 for my most competitive keyphrase to #500 on Yahoo and could not identify any change in Google.

Of course I had been doing many other things as well, hence the three times trying. It is difficult to say with certainty, but it seems that Yahoo does penalize for keywords in the link title attribute. I assume you can have some number and be okay, but who knows what that number might be.

Also, I can say that link title stuffing has never improved my position, only hurt it. My conclusion is that it is not worth the risk.

[se4b4ss]

Originally Posted by longcall911

If you choose to use the title attribute, I would suggest you do so very conservatively to start. I assume you want to get your on-page keyword density higher, so use great care. I’ve tried loading my links 3 times now on the same site. I intentionally over loaded to see just what would happen, and at one point I dropped from #25 for my most competitive keyphrase to #500 on Yahoo and could not identify any change in Google.

how do you tell what rank you are for a specific keyphrase?

sorry for the digression,
steve

[longcall911]

Originally Posted by se4b4ss

how do you tell what rank you are for a specific keyphrase?

By that I meant my actual position in the results pages. So, you would search Yahoo! for example using your most popluar keywords, then find where your own site (or page) is located.

In my case, I had made it to #25 out of 1.2 million pages that the search found.

/*tom*/

[John Scott]

The title attribute is ignored by Google.

[awall19]

Originally Posted by JohnScott

The title attribute is ignored by Google.

but not necissarily so on all major search engines...

[Crichey]

It will help theme the link page to gain relevance. IMHO