What is a title attribute?
Senior SEO-specialist
With a title attribute I mean the titles for links and images on a website. You can use this to provide additional information about the link or image. The information appears to the user when they hover over the link. These HTML attributes have a small impact on your website’s SEO. In this article, I tell you more about this.
What is a title attribute?
A title attribute is a block of extra information that you can attach to a link or an image on your Web site. This block of information says something about what the link refers to or what can be seen on the website. A title attribute does not lie in the layout page itself, but floats above it, so to speak. (1)
Not the same as Alt Text
A title attribute is not the same as Alt Text. The latter is often seen as a description on a page when an image cannot load. An alternative text then appears, which serves to describe what would be seen in the image.
This feature also serves to describe to visually impaired site visitors what to read on the site. The text can then be spoken by special screen reader software, allowing visitors with limited vision to still use the Internet. Title attributes, however, are usually not pronounced.
Title attribute impact on SEO
It is not entirely clear whether title attributes really have great value for SEO. Spiders do not pick up the information from these blocks of information. This would mean that the additional information would not affect indexing in search engines.
On touchscreen devices, it makes no sense to place title attributes. After all, you can’t “hover” over a link there with a mouse. The reason for doing so is to provide the user with a more usable site. SEO influence is minimal.
Still, many specialists feel they have to incorporate the keyword here; personally, I wouldn’t spend too much time and attention on it. Rather to providing value in the form of quality content in the image itself. This has much more impact, not only on the SEO, but also on the UX.
My advice
Because applying a title attribute hardly takes you any extra effort, our advice is to apply it to links or images. With this, you give that little bit extra, making the site experience more enjoyable for the visitor. Thanks to these attributes, your site is even better taken care of. You can also provide additional information that might make your site content too woolly or distract from the main thread of the text.
- HTML Global title Attribute. (s.d.). https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_global_title.asp
