Anchor text is the visible text of a hyperlink on a webpage. It’s used to describe a link and is a lot more pleasing to the eye than a long link included in the content. However, anchor texts aren’t just used because they look better. They serve an important search engine optimization purpose. It’s well known that links are an important part of SEO. The more inbound links that a website has coming from different relevant sources, the better. It establishes trust with the search engines and conveys that the website is legitimate. Therefore, anchor text links are valuable tools.
To incorporate anchor text links correctly for SEO it’s important to use the keywords that you are targeting. Links pointing to your website are great, but keyword anchor text links are even better. They help the search engines better understand what it is that you offer to index your site more accurately. For example, if you operate a website for a flower shop, using “flower shop” as the anchor text helps for SEO purposes, whereas “click here” doesn’t, since it really has nothing to do with the services that you provide.
When it comes to anchor text, the best strategy is to vary it. If you create too many links using the same anchor text it can create a red flag with the search engines and it might appear to be spam. This provides an opportunity to use all of the keywords that you are targeting on a specific page. In the flower shop example, the website owner could use “Amy’s Flower Shop” and “Chicago Flower Shop” in addition to simply “flower shop”. It’s best to mix them up.
Landing pages are also important when it comes to utilizing anchor text. When implementing a link building strategy, don’t just create links that point back to the homepage. There should be many other pages of your site that have good content, so don’t forget about those. Each page will obviously have different anchor text links since the keywords that you target should be different for each page. For example, if you use “roses” as the anchor text, the link should take the user to the page that offers information about roses. If it simply linked to the homepage it would create a bad user experience. It’s likely that the person that clicked on “roses” wanted to find roses, and will now have to go searching on your page for what they want.
Keyword anchor text is also great for people using screen readers. It’s an easy way for them to understand what the link is about. Something basic like “read more” might leave them at a loss if they don’t really understand where that link will take them. Keyword anchor text provides a better user experience.
Anchor text is a great SEO tool when used correctly. The main things to remember are to avoid generic anchor text and incorporate keywords, vary the anchor text that you use, and use appropriate keywords that match the content on the landing page.
About the Author:
Brick Marketing is a Boston, MA based SEO and SEM company. For more information, visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.
