How to Add Title Attributes to Magento’s Main Nav

You may have heard that it’s good to have a title attribute defined in your most visible links for SEO purposes. Unfortunately, Magento’s main nav does not do this. It’s easy to add. Just follow these steps.

First, copy “app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/block/Navigation.php” to “app/code/local/Mage/Catalog/block/Navigation.php”. Create the needed directories if they do not exist. This will override Magento’s core version and will allow your changes to survive an update.

Next, open the file you just created. Find the the function drawItem then find the line that looks like

$html.= ‘<a href=”‘.$this->getCategoryUrl($category).’”><span>’.$this->htmlEscape($category->getName()).’</span></a>’.”\n”;

And replace it with

$html.= ‘<a href=”‘.$this->getCategoryUrl($category).’” title=”‘.$this->htmlEscape($category->getName()).’”><span>’.$this->htmlEscape($category->getName()).’</span></a>’.”\n”;

That will insert the category’s name into the title attribute. Save and it should be working.