SEO issue of <a> elements put dependently inside a context

[Zhang-Junzhi]

What problem are you trying to solve?

When the text content of an <a> element is not self-explanatory and put dependently inside a context, it could be search-engine-unfriendly, for example:

<p>Here are the pictures taken these days, sorted by date. You can click the links below to browse them:<p>
<ul>
     <li><a href="...">April 1st</a></li>
     <li><a href="...">April 2nd</a></li>
     <li><a href="...">April 3rd</a></li>
     ...
</ul>

The links are about pictures while the text contents of these links are dates which are not self-explanatory, making it search-engine-unfriendly.

What solutions exist today?

There are currently two workarounds:

1. Apply title attributes to links:

<p>Here are the pictures taken these days, sorted by date. You can click the links below to browse them:<p>
<ul>
     <li><a href="..." title="pictures taken on April 1st">April 1st</a></li>
     <li><a href="..." title="pictures taken on April 2nd">April 2nd</a></li>
     <li><a href="..." title="pictures taken on April 3rd">April 3rd</a></li>
     ...
</ul>

However, this creates unnecessary tips on this links.

2. Modify the text contents inside these links:

<p>Here are the pictures taken these days, sorted by date. You can click the links below to browse them:<p>
<ul>
     <li><a href="...">Pictures taken on April 1st</a></li>
     <li><a href="...">Pictures taken on April 2nd</a></li>
     <li><a href="...">Pictures taken on April 3rd</a></li>
     ...
</ul>

However, this creates verbose text.

I would say both the two workarounds modify the document content, in order to just to cater to both the users and SEO. In other words, they couple UX and SEO in a ugly way. I think some better solution might be provided, perhaps via spec. Any thoughts on this issue? Thanks!

How would you solve it?

No response

Anything else?

No response

[YummyBacon5]

This is more for accessibility than SEO. Since in WCAG 2.2 Link Purpose (Link Only), its understanding document has more techniques. Such as using aria-label - which doesn't create a tooltip.

Also, I'm sure search engines do consider context, like in your first example.

[Zhang-Junzhi]

This is more for accessibility than SEO. Since in WCAG 2.2 Link Purpose (Link Only), its understanding document has more techniques. Such as using aria-label - which doesn't create a tooltip.

Also, I'm sure search engines do consider context, like in your first example.

Good to know search engines do consider context.

BTW, I thought of ARIA to begin with. But I had searched for relationship between ARIA and SEO for a while Before posting, and found no evidence of search engines paying attention to ARIA attributes. The aria-label is primarily for human, so it's not particularly necessary in my example, because human will try to find the context near the <a> themselves in the document. So that's why I didn't mention ARIA.

[domenic]

Closing as this issue seems to be based on a lack of understanding of how search engines function.