Search Engine Optimization Guide for Beginners – Anchor Text

Anchor text is the content that is placed within the anchor tag and users will see as a clickable text and on clicking it the user is taken to a new page. It is also known as link label or link title and can be one of the most important factors in determining the traffic and ranking of a site in Google.

Anchor text tells site visitors & search engines what the page, you're linking to, is about. As you maybe aware links on a web page can be of two types. Internal links point to other pages on the same website and external links point to content on other websites. In either of these cases, the more accurate the anchor text is, the easier it is for users and search engine bots to judge page's topic and navigate to that page.

There are few guidelines on how to optimize the Anchor text. Anchor text for a link should be descriptive. It should give visitor an idea what the page linked is about. A SEO consultant should be careful and avoid generic anchor text like “Click Here”, “page”, “this article” etc. These are absolute waste and leave visitors clueless. The anchor text should be accurate and not misinform users. They should not be off topic and should be related to the page been pointed. Many times, a web page's URL is used as anchor text. This is not recommended apart from in few instances.

The anchor text should be crisp and concise. Care should be taken not to make it very long. Long sentences and paragraphs should not be anchor text. Anchor text should be descriptive but short. Keywords or key phrases should be used to send the message home. This is very vital when SEO and backlink campaign is involved.

A SEO consultant should also ensure that anchor text should be clearly visible to a user. They should not look like regular text. This is also against user interface principles. By default, anchor text gets underlined when mouse pointer is placed over it. CSS and text styling which modifies this behavior and make anchor text appear like a regular text should be avoided. A user should be able to distinguish between anchor text and other text so as to not miss the links or click unintentionally. Same factors should be kept in mind while creating anchor text for internal links. This helps a user in navigating within a website easily. This also increases the chances of all your pages been spidered by Google bots. The anchor text should be made keeping a user in mind and not just for search engines. Unnecessary internal links should be avoided as they may confuse a user.

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Author: Aniruddha Badola