$re = '/(<a[^>]*)>([^<]*)(<\/a>)/';
$str = '<ul>
<li><a href="www.google.com" target="blank">Google</a></li>
<li><a href="www.yahoo.com" target="blank">Yahoo</a></li>
<li><a href="www.bing.com" target="blank">Bing</a></li>
</ul>';
$subst = "$1 aria-label=\"$2\">$2$3";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php