backlink strategy

[stgma]

hello

I'm kind of new in this field, so excuse me if this question is very basic.
When I have a backlink to my page which looks like:
<a href="http://domain.com" title="visit banana site">coconut</a>

Will the word in the title attribute (banana) play any role on google searching to display domain.com? Or is it 100% the word inside the anchor (coconut)?

Words near but outsite the anchor will play absolutely no role, right?

thanks

[Relevancy]

The anchor text is what counts. The title attribute plays no roll in link popularity.

[David Wallace]

I confir with what Relevancy says and have even seen several tests to prove that the title attribute in a link is not given any weight by search engines.

[Tue Skaarup]

...the title attribute in a link is not given any weight by search engines.
That might be true, but I like to use ALT or Title attribs to tell the visitor what she can expect to find on the page linked to.

[Marcia]

For text links, the visitor can tell by the anchor text - unless it's something irrelevant and "cutesie" or just "click here," in which case the title attribute can be descriptive of the actual contents of the page linked to and show up in browser tooltips, even though it hasn't any ranking value.

The ALT attribute is only for images, and has value for links (if the image is a link) as well as being valuable for accessibility and usability - particularly if the image isn't helpful and/or descriptive enough.

[Tue Skaarup]

My bad. Yes, ALT attrib for images.

I still like the Title attribs for text links to help the visitors. Often it is not possible to make it clear in the anchor text what can be expected when clicking the link.

[vayapues]

The ALT attribute is only for images, and has value for links (if the image is a link) as well as being valuable for accessibility and usability - particularly if the image isn't helpful and/or descriptive enough.

I agree with Marcia on alt tags having value for links as long as they are not keyword stuffed. I hate when a website's alt tags are so long they take up half the page, and contain nothing but keywords.

Keep them simple, short, and by far most importantly, keep them useful and relevant to the user. Otherwise, you sacrifice your conversion.