Google's John Mueller said he still recommends you have visible anchor text for your links in order to "provide more context for search engines." Don't just use title elements in the link attribute; make sure the link has actual visible anchor text.
John said this on Bluesky in response to this question:
Link Context question: A long time ago in a galaxy not so far, far away when indexing Google used anchor + title to understand the context of a hyperlink (I.e. what a user should expect on the other end). Would it be fair to say that aria-label has replaced the title attribute?Asking due to 1) mobile browsers not supporting title attribute, 2) mobile first indexing and 3) aria-label being an a11y equivalent.
John replied:
I'd focus on the visible anchor text, if you want to provide more context for search engines. Make it obvious to everyone what the linked page is for.
Make things obvious, is somewhat obvious. And yea, this is not new, but it has been a while since I heard and covered a link specific question in SEO.
Forum discussion at Bluesky.
