Anchor Text, have you heard of it? It is one of the hundreds of words that clarify the process of improving the SERP ranking of a website.
If you are having trouble developing an effective link-building strategy, you should reconsider how you use anchor text. Using the appropriate anchor text ensures that crawlers and users gain more value from the links you include in your content. A better user experience can impact positively on SEO metrics resulting in higher rankings, more traffic, and faster growth.
What is Anchor Text?
The clickable text of a link is known as anchor text. It is usually displayed to the reader in a different color than the rest of the text on a web page or blog post. It may also be in bold or underlined form. However, it appears that it is what you can click to go to a different page or site.
A link would look something like this in the HTML code of a page:
<a href=”web page url>Anchor Text</a>
Anchor Text Types
Know here about a few different types of anchor text:
Brand Anchor Text – Brand anchor text is a clickable link that includes the website name (like “RAKSAV”) to which the link leads.
URL Anchor Text: A page is linked using a URL. In other words, it only has the web address and no written anchor text.
Example – https://raksav.com/
These are the most appropriate for citing sources. They demonstrate transparency by not tricking users into visiting a page they do not want to see.
Topical: This is anchor text that represents the general subject of the web page a link will take you to. An example would be if the phrase ‘best SEO service provider’ linked to a page specifically about link building.
Target Keyword: This anchor text matches the target keyword of the linked-to page either exactly or partially.
Image: When an image is used as a link, its alt text becomes the link’s anchor text. Linking through images can be beneficial as long as the alt text is well-written.
Miscellaneous: This is a common word or phrase used to create a link. Its most common examples are: read more, click here, visit here, continue, etc.
What is the significance of anchor text in SEO?
Anchor text is essential for SEO because it informs search engines about the content of a page. Crawlers examine the anchor text of a link to determine which keywords relate most closely.
Many website owners used to create keyword-rich anchor text to increase their website rankings in the past. They used target keywords to trick Google into believing their links were relevant.
The Penguin update, released in April 2012, targeted a variety of black hat SEO tactics designed to fool crawlers. It included link schemes with low-quality links and keyword-stuffed anchor text. Such links manipulated PageRank, making a piece of content appear more relevant than it was.
Because of the Penguin algorithm update, SEOs could no longer rely on anchor text as a ranking factor. Instead, they had to create user-friendly anchor text. If the content on a web page did not correspond to the link text, the page’s rankings would suffer. It is still true today.
Your links must have accurate anchor text so that users know what to expect on the corresponding page. Making misleading link text will result in a bad user experience.
Optimize Internal Link
You have complete control over your internal links. The anchor text of these links is vital to Google and should be important to you also. The search engine considers the distribution of internal and external link anchor text. When Google evaluates the relevance of your pages, the two factors combine.
You must ensure that your internal links anchor text distribution is correct. As a starting point, you can refer to the target distribution created. However, you may not want your internal link anchor text distribution to match the target distribution.
You may suspect that the anchor text for your external links is over-optimized for target keywords. To balance things out, use your internal link distribution. You’d want less target keyword anchor text for your internal links in that case.
How to Use Anchor Text Strategy in Websites Effectively
Now that you have learned more about the various types of anchor text, it is time to dive into some SEO best practices.
These will be simple, easy-to-implement recommendations that will help you build a more complex plan over time.
Tip No. 1: Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion about what constitutes an appropriate anchor text strategy. SEO tips in your linking activities, relevance is at the top of Google’s priority list. They do not want to damage their reputation by answering questions with irrelevant information.
Tip No. 2: If you are constantly looking for the perfect match, you will trigger Google’s spam filter, and you can be penalized.
If you only link to brand names, you will probably get a similar result. When it comes to developing an SEO-friendly anchor text strategy, I have found that coming up with your own unique and diverse approach works best. It runs counter to most recommendations and focuses on which anchor texts to use based on specific ratios.
Tip No. 3: Tracking how you use anchor texts on your site will take some time, but it is the only way to see how they affect your SEO over time.
Conclusion
An anchor text is crucial for SEO because it describes the Google page. Hence, you need to include it as it is the main factor in increasing your SERP ranking. Furthermore, we hope this anchor text guide has helped you understand what anchor text is, the different types of anchor text, and how and why you should use it in your web page content.