mihomes - 6:10 am on May 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

Been trying to clarify some of my normal techniques ni regards to todays seo 'rules'...

I currently use something like the following :

<a class="featuresbutton" href="/thelink.htm" title="View Blue Widget's Features">View Features</a>

Without showing all the css this produces an image button with rollover. As I am using the title attribute when the user rolls over they see the title text. The anchor text, 'View Features', is hidden using css and a text-indent as the actual image has text on the button.

In theory, this sounds fine, however, I am reading conflicting opinions on this. Some believe using text-indent to hide the anchor text is blackhat/spam. I personally do not agree with this as you are only hiding the text from the user not the search engines.

I would like opinions on the following though :

1 - Would you use the title tag as the actual description of the button? Disregard it entirely?

2 - The anchor text I use is non-specific. For example I might have a trial, features, and buy button for say 5 products on one page... while the title tags are different for each I keep the anchor text as something like 'trial download, view features, buy now'. While I know anchor text is a bigger factor for links I do not want to go and customize the wording for each button of each product for fear that it will be considered keyword stuffing OR overloading the page with certain keywords. This is kind of a catch-22 for me... I want the links to have relevant wording, but dont want to end up overdoing certain words on a page for the anchor text.

The reason I am using the title attribute is if for user clarity (an extra step so they know what they are clicking on) as the text pops up on mouse hover.

I know someone will say to use the anchor text over the buttons, but honestly it does not look as good and I do not want the buttons as large as the actual text if that makes sense.

Opinions? Please discuss...