Title attribute - any SEO value
PeterMcC
links, does anyone have any info on the benefits of using keywords in the
title attribute either in graphic links or text links?
--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.
Philipp Lenssen
> does anyone have any info on the benefits of using keywords in the
> title attribute either in graphic links or text links?
The title attribute in HTML should be the title of the image. E.g. if
the image contains a portrait of Larry Page, you would put title="Larry
Page". The alt-text on the other hand should contain a textual
replacement of what the image communicates visually. It can be left
empty in case the image is purely illustrative. If the image would read
"Larry Page" (probably not a good idea in the first place, because it
better be text), the alt-text would be "Larry Page", and the title
might be left empty.
--
Google Blogoscoped
http://blog.outer-court.com
PeterMcC
Thanks for your time, Philip. I do understand the function of the two
attributes but was wanting to know, specifically, whether any keywords used
within the title attribute would be credited by Google - as is the case, for
instance, with Google's crediting of keywords that appear in the alt
attribute for images used as links.
As Google no longer credits keywords in the alt attribute for non-linking
graphics, I have assumed that this is also true of keywords in the title
attribute - I would be pleased to have this confirmed or corrected.
SEO Dave
wrote:
>Whilst Google credits keywords in the alt attribute on graphics used as
>links, does anyone have any info on the benefits of using keywords in the
>title attribute either in graphic links or text links?
Hi,
Alt text of non linking images and title text doesn't help, anchor
text of text links and alt text of image links does.
See my old posts for much more detail.
David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 31/08/2003)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/
Philipp Lenssen
>
> Thanks for your time, Philip. I do understand the function of the two
> attributes but was wanting to know, specifically, whether any
> keywords used within the title attribute would be credited by Google
> - as is the case, for instance, with Google's crediting of keywords
> that appear in the alt attribute for images used as links.
>
Even _if_ Google would ignore the title-attribute at the moment, they
might not in the future, so it's safer to understand the
title-attribute meaning according to HTML specifics. But your question
is valid and I leave it to someone with special information (or who set
up a test-case) to answer it. I for one use dashes in image-file-names
(and sometimes link to them using a keyword, naturally), and have good
results from Google Images (one of my heaviest traffic comes from a
single image I put online unsuspectingly, and its somewhere deep within
my site -- but it became a popular search key after a certain movie was
released, a movie unrelated to the image... not that I made any money
off of that fact).
PeterMcC
Thanks - and did you not think of suing the movie for stealing your
copyright? You had the word as an image file name before they had it as a
movie title :)
PeterMcC
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 11:19:40 +0100, "PeterMcC" <pe...@mccourt.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Whilst Google credits keywords in the alt attribute on graphics used
>> as links, does anyone have any info on the benefits of using
>> keywords in the title attribute either in graphic links or text
>> links?
>
> Hi,
>
> Alt text of non linking images and title text doesn't help, anchor
> text of text links and alt text of image links does.
>
Thanks David - I undestand the above and I'm sorry if I'm failing to spot
the information in there that I need.
I know that:
1 - there's no SEO value in the attributes of images that aren't used as
links
2 - there is SEO value in the anchor text in text links
3 - there is SEO value in the alt attribute of images that are used as links
My query is whether there is any SEO value in the text in the title
attribute of graphics used as links or in the title attribute of text links.
Is that what you meant in "Alt text of non linking images and title text
doesn't help."? I initially read it as meaning that neither the alt
attribute nor the title attribute of non linking images was of value - of
which I was aware - but now I'm wondering if you meant that the title
attribute doesn't help in any circumstances. If it's the latter, you've
answered the question - thanks. :)
SEO Dave
wrote:
>Is that what you meant in "Alt text of non linking images and title text
>doesn't help."? I initially read it as meaning that neither the alt
>attribute nor the title attribute of non linking images was of value - of
>which I was aware - but now I'm wondering if you meant that the title
>attribute doesn't help in any circumstances. If it's the latter, you've
>answered the question - thanks. :)
Hi,
I've checked the title attributes text for standard text links and
found that text isn't indexed by Google. I've not checked if the link
is an image link with title attribute text as had assumed it also
wouldn't be indexed.
So to answer your question I haven't tested that situation, but will
now, although suspect it won't be included.
To confirm this is the sort of link you are thinking of-
<a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
alt="this text is indexed"></a>
Here's the ones I've checked-
Standard image (no link)
<img src="image.jpg" alt="this text is NOT indexed">
Image Link
<a href="index.html"><img src="image.jpg" alt="this text IS
indexed"></a>
Text Link
<a href="index.html">This Text Is Indexed</a>
Text Link with title text
<a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
alt="this text is indexed">This Text Is Indexed</a>
Others to check-
<a href="index.html"><img src="image.jpg" alt="this text IS
indexed">I'd assume this Text Is Indexed, but not checked</a>
<a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
alt="this text is indexed"></a>
Hope that's as confusing to read as it was to make :-))
Andreas Prilop
> The title attribute in HTML should be the title of the image.
The TITLE attribute (unlike ALT) is not restricted to images.
It can be used with most (all?) elements.
http://uk.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/attrs.html#title
For example, inspect the source text of
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/arabic.html6
Bob Kochem
"SEO Dave" <ooar...@AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:q2honvsi845rr3f7q...@4ax.com...
much (good) material snipped for now
> Image Link
>
> <a href="index.html"><img src="image.jpg" alt="this text IS
> indexed"></a>
>
> _
> Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
> Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 31/08/2003)
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/
I hope I'm not muddying the water, but to *whom* is it indexed? If Page A
has an image as above, that links to another site Page B, does the text
contribute to Page A's ranking, or does it contribute to the value of the
inbound link to Page B's ranking? Or both?
I may be misunderstanding much about how this works, maybe not even phrasing
the quetsion properly. Please say if so!
Thanks,
Bob kochem
MinuteMan Systems
PeterMcC
Many thanks for the efforts - and, since my default setting is "confused",
it makes perfect sense :)
This is the one that's bothering me:
<a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
alt="this text is indexed"></a>.
I know, from testing that, in:
<a href="index.html">< img src="image.jpg" alt="this text is indexed"
title="is this text indexed"></a>
the title text is not indexed.
As for your <a href="index.html"><img src="image.jpg" alt="this text IS
indexed">I'd assume this Text Is Indexed, but not checked</a>, that's an
interesting one.
If your assumption is correct and it seems reasonable, it looks useful
doesn't it? Double the indexed keywords per link - I suspect that a 1px
transparent gif with alt text may be seen by Google as perhaps not playing
the game but there ought to be legitimate uses for a combined image and text
link. OK, I can't actually think of one at the moment...
And <a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
alt="this text is indexed"></a> would have the same benefit if it were to
work - though I suspect that it won't.
What I'd really like would be
<a href="index.html" title="indexed text"><img src-"image.jpg" alt="indexed
text" title="indexed text">Indexed text</a> but it looks as though the title
attribute *is* a waste of time for SEO.
I've a client at No 1/3,5000,000 on Google for their primary search term
but they've dropped to 2/2,000,000 on Yahoo and, of course, they're starting
to panic, That's what I get for making such a big thing about telling them
they'd got to number 1 - hoist, once more, by my own petard.
I've used title text in the past but I'm thinking about removing most of it
to raise the sound-to-noise ratio - I'll leave the alt text of course - and
wanted to get a little reassurance before I did anything precipitous.
Once again, many thanks.
BTW, does anyone have a 1px transparent gif? I put mine down a while back
and just can't find it.
Eric Johnston
news:xZSeb.1913$kA.5...@wards.force9.net...
> Whilst Google credits keywords in the alt attribute on graphics used as
> links, does anyone have any info on the benefits of using keywords in the
> title attribute either in graphic links or text links?
My opinon is that words in the title attribute have no beneficial effect, in
fact I have observed the opposite: the increase in file size dilutes the
effect of the visible words.
I have also verified that acronym and abbreviation attributes have the same
negative effect.
It is shame since these attributes are really nice for the reader, in
expanding on difficult to understand topics in the text and providing
pleasant hover pop-up windows giving explanations - like active footnotes
and references.
Readers new to this "title" business, please note that I am NOT referring to
the <title> line in the html header, which is very important.
Best regards, Eric
www.satsig.net
SEO Dave
wrote:
>Many thanks for the efforts - and, since my default setting is "confused",
>it makes perfect sense :)
No problem and LOL.
>This is the one that's bothering me:
><a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
>alt="this text is indexed"></a>.
I'll see if I can't find a page with this format on though guess it
will be rare since it's not an obvious way to format a link, so will
probably have to set something up and wait weeks for a result.
>I know, from testing that, in:
><a href="index.html">< img src="image.jpg" alt="this text is indexed"
>title="is this text indexed"></a>
>the title text is not indexed.
>
Good to know and expected, my default setting on title="text" is the
"text" won't help the page so leave it out.
>As for your <a href="index.html"><img src="image.jpg" alt="this text IS
>indexed">I'd assume this Text Is Indexed, but not checked</a>, that's an
>interesting one.
>
>If your assumption is correct and it seems reasonable, it looks useful
>doesn't it?
I've done some checking on this as I have a porn site that uses the
above format for some links (won't post the url for obvious reasons,
but you can easily find it if needed :-).
Some of the links the alt text is different to the anchor text and
both are indexed.
The format is ALT="Keyword1 Keyword 2 Keyword3" anchor text is
"Keyword1 Keyword3".
Doing an exact search (surrounded by "") for "Keyword1 Keyword3" shows
the page with that phrase in the anchor text and the Google cache of
the page highlights the anchor text of the link.
Doing an exact search (surrounded by "") for "Keyword1 Keyword 2
Keyword3" shows the same page (only incidence of the phrase is in the
ALT text of one link) and the Google cache of the page highlights
nothing, says it's only found in links.
This shows both the alt and anchor text is indexed, but gives no
indication as to what this means to the page it's on and the page it
is linking to. Will it double the effect to the linked page or water
down each word used? Very difficult to test.
I'd guess it would help the page it's on, beyond that I'm not sure. I
suspect it wouldn't hurt the linked too page as long as the words used
helped the page.
>Double the indexed keywords per link - I suspect that a 1px
>transparent gif with alt text may be seen by Google as perhaps not playing
>the game but there ought to be legitimate uses for a combined image and text
>link. OK, I can't actually think of one at the moment...
I'm using it and didn't originally do it for SEO reasons, thought it
looked good. Email me and I'll give you a link to a page (over 18s
only).
>
>And <a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
>alt="this text is indexed"></a> would have the same benefit if it were to
>work - though I suspect that it won't.
>
>What I'd really like would be
><a href="index.html" title="indexed text"><img src-"image.jpg" alt="indexed
>text" title="indexed text">Indexed text</a> but it looks as though the title
>attribute *is* a waste of time for SEO.
I'd say title is a waste of time.
>I've a client at No 1/3,5000,000 on Google for their primary search term
>but they've dropped to 2/2,000,000 on Yahoo and, of course, they're starting
>to panic, That's what I get for making such a big thing about telling them
>they'd got to number 1 - hoist, once more, by my own petard.
LOL, our main keyword dropped from 7 or 8th to around 15th about a
month ago and I'm still waiting for it to go back up or better than
7th. Funny thing is though we had an increase in traffic from other
searches and an almost doubling in the number of orders!!
>I've used title text in the past but I'm thinking about removing most of it
>to raise the sound-to-noise ratio - I'll leave the alt text of course - and
>wanted to get a little reassurance before I did anything precipitous.
I've removed all title text from every page i know it's on. I've
probably missed the odd one, but 99% have gone. I do a lot of work to
improve our SERPs every day, so impossible to say if it made a
difference, but in general our SERPs improve every month.
The difficulty is right now is for competitive searches the anchor
text/alt text of incoming inks far out weighs anything we can do on
page. So the most perfect SEO'd page will fail without links using the
right keywords. Does make life interesting finding new links each
month though :-))
>Once again, many thanks.
No problem.
>BTW, does anyone have a 1px transparent gif? I put mine down a while back
>and just can't find it.
David
T.J.
"SEO Dave" <ooar...@AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 18:20:26 +0100, "PeterMcC" <pe...@mccourt.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
> >Many thanks for the efforts - and, since my default setting is "confused",
> >it makes perfect sense :)
>
> No problem and LOL.
>
> >This is the one that's bothering me:
> ><a href="index.html" title="is this text indexed"><img src="image.jpg"
> >alt="this text is indexed"></a>.
>
> I'll see if I can't find a page with this format on though guess it
> will be rare since it's not an obvious way to format a link, so will
> probably have to set something up and wait weeks for a result.
That is the way I changed most of mine to about a month a go
and my PR went up from 4 to 5, I also gained 3 or 4 extra inbound
links, so the increase is probably more likely because of that.
SEO Dave
>That is the way I changed most of mine to about a month a go
>and my PR went up from 4 to 5, I also gained 3 or 4 extra inbound
>links, so the increase is probably more likely because of that.
looking at your page your title text isn't benefiting the page. Take
the text link below-
<td bgcolor="#EEEEEE" valign="top"><a href="" title="Click here to
shrink banner" onClick="faf24(); return false;"><img
src="http://banner.easyspace.com/right.gif" width=12 height=12
border=0></a></td>
Doing an exact search for
"Click here to shrink banner"
Gives no results on your domain. Assuming you haven't added that link
recently it shows title text is not indexed.
Then there is-
Please click here to visit our <br><a
href="http://www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk/3.html" title="link to
portable and permanent wheelchairs ramp">Wheelchair
Ramps</a><br>section.
Doing an exact search for
"link to portable and permanent wheelchairs ramp"
Gives no results. assuming you haven't added that link recently it
shows title text is not indexed.
On the other hand this link-
<a href="http://www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk/3.html"><img
src="http://www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk/standoub4.JPG" border="0"
alt="wheelchair ramps, wheelchairs, scooters and other disability
products"></a>
Doing an exact search for
"wheelchair ramps, wheelchairs, scooters and other disability
products"
Gives one result, your page. Shows alt text of links is indexed.
Anyone following this thread should now see the title="text to be
indexed" is a waste of time (at least in google).
PeterMcC
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 18:38:56 +0100, "T.J." <n...@home.invalid> wrote:
> Anyone following this thread should now see the title="text to be
> indexed" is a waste of time (at least in google).
>
It looks that way, and thanks to all who've helped in clarifying the
situation.
T.J.
"SEO Dave" <ooar...@AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
Doesn't look like it has any seo benefits at the moment, but
you never know when the algorithms will change.
I hope, as web sit accessibility becomes more of an issue
Google will start regarding it.
Seeing as it improves the look and accessibility of text links,
I think it is definitely worth including.
T.J.
"SEO Dave" <ooar...@AMntlworld.com> wrote in message
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 18:38:56 +0100, "T.J." <n...@home.invalid> wrote:
>
> >That is the way I changed most of mine to about a month a go
> >and my PR went up from 4 to 5, I also gained 3 or 4 extra inbound
> >links, so the increase is probably more likely because of that.
<snipped>
> On the other hand this link-
>
> <a href="http://www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk/3.html"><img
> src="http://www.wheelchair-ramps.co.uk/standoub4.JPG" border="0"
> alt="wheelchair ramps, wheelchairs, scooters and other disability
> products"></a>
>
> Doing an exact search for
>
> "wheelchair ramps, wheelchairs, scooters and other disability
> products"
>
> Gives one result, your page. Shows alt text of links is indexed.
This proves the value of the alt attribute, but leads to the question
is an alt attribute as valuable as a key word in text?
for example, which is best? (seo)
"we are the number 1 suppliers of *****"
or
<img src="no1.jpg" alt="The number 1 suppliers of *****">
(assuming that "no1.jpg is the text, as an image)
Another tip I have just thought of is,
whenever listing, instead of using <li>
use an image as the dot with a relevant alt attribute.
like
<img src="dot.jpg" alt="****">
(where ***** is a keyword)
Anybody already tried this? or think it might be a good tip?
PeterMcC
Nice idea - worth a try.
SEO Dave
>This proves the value of the alt attribute, but leads to the question
>is an alt attribute as valuable as a key word in text?
>for example, which is best? (seo)
Hi,
Don't know, but would assume for the page it's on text is considered
more important since you see it with no effort. To see ALT text you
have to hover over the image. Since Google bases most of it's on page
stuff on what the visitor sees it's reasonable to assume if it's
easier to see Google considers it more important.
I have no evidence this is the case, but it makes sense.
>"we are the number 1 suppliers of *****"
>or
><img src="no1.jpg" alt="The number 1 suppliers of *****">
>(assuming that "no1.jpg is the text, as an image)
>
>Another tip I have just thought of is,
>whenever listing, instead of using <li>
>use an image as the dot with a relevant alt attribute.
>like
><img src="dot.jpg" alt="****">
>(where ***** is a keyword)
>
>Anybody already tried this? or think it might be a good tip?
>
Alt text is only indexed when it's part of the link, so the above
(which would be spamming) doesn't work.
PeterMcC
I was assuming that the list was a series of links, as in the examples
towards the bpttom of
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/taminglists/
And, if the bullet were the widget site's logo, alt="widget logo" might be
clumsy but legitimate.
SEO Dave
>Doesn't look like it has any seo benefits at the moment, but
>you never know when the algorithms will change.
Hi,
That's why we are all here, keeping track of what's happening with
search engines (in other words google as all the others pale in
comparison). I keep checking what I know every so often and if I ever
find a page that the title text is indexed I'll start using it again.
For SEO title text is a bad idea, I have anecdotal evidence it can
hurt a page as does someone else on the group.
>I hope, as web sit accessibility becomes more of an issue
>Google will start regarding it.
Too easy to spam and not required for accessibility since a text link
has anchor text already.
>Seeing as it improves the look and accessibility of text links,
>I think it is definitely worth including.
That's a choice for each site to make.
T.J.
Yes, I was talking about a list of links, and also making the dot a link
like this,
<a href="link to product1"><img src="dot.jpg" alt= "link to product 1"</a>
<a href="link to product1">link to product1</a>
As you say, a little clumsy, but it is a legitimate way of getting another
keyword in the alt attribute,
As Dave pointed out it may be seen as spam, but worth playing around
with on an experimental site.
Philipp Lenssen
> Philipp Lenssen wrote:
> >
> > Even if Google would ignore the title-attribute at the moment, they
> > might not in the future, so it's safer to understand the
> > title-attribute meaning according to HTML specifics. But your
> > question is valid and I leave it to someone with special
> > information (or who set up a test-case) to answer it. I for one use
> > dashes in image-file-names (and sometimes link to them using a
> > keyword, naturally), and have good results from Google Images (one
> > of my heaviest traffic comes from a single image I put online
> > unsuspectingly, and its somewhere deep within my site -- but it
> > became a popular search key after a certain movie was released, a
> > movie unrelated to the image... not that I made any money off of
> > that fact).
>
> Thanks - and did you not think of suing the movie for stealing your
> copyright? You had the word as an image file name before they had it
> as a movie title :)
I'm afraid the movie was based on a comic book... :)
Philipp Lenssen
> On 2 Oct 2003, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
>
> > The title attribute in HTML should be the title of the image.
>
> The TITLE attribute (unlike ALT) is not restricted to images.
> It can be used with most (all?) elements.
> http://uk.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/attrs.html#title
>
Of course. I suppose my comment above is misleading. I regularly use
title for links, e.g. when the link-text does not provide full context.
As in:
"You can find bars in Villagetown on Rich Street, Abbey Road, and Mark
Lane."
If the street names are links, I might add "Villagetown: Rich Street"
in the link title. (Hope the example makes sense.)