What is Anchor Text?
Anchor Text is the piece of text that a link is attached to. When you click on it, generally you go to another webpage URL or to a specific location on the page (think how the table of contents works).
When this text has a link attached to it, they may appear as blue, red, or even underlined.
The purpose of anchor texts are to help readers AND search engine crawlers understand where the link is going to.
What does good anchor text look like? Good anchor text is specific and relevant to the content of the linked web page.
For example, instead of saying “Click here,“
you could say “Learn more about cats.“
SEO Benefits of Good Anchor Text
How does proper anchor text strategies help with your SEO?
From google crawlers to accessibility – let’s do a quick look into the wide variety of benefits anchor text has in optimizing your content.
- Improved Click-Through Rates (CTR): Engaging and relevant anchor text can entice users to click, boosting your website’s traffic.
- Deeper Context for Search Engines: Search engines use anchor text to understand the context of your pages and their relationship to other websites. This helps them index your content accurately and present it in relevant search results.
- Accessibility and Image Optimization: Don’t forget about image optimization! Alt text (more down below) serves two crucial purposes. It describes the image for users who rely on screen readers, promoting accessibility. Additionally, search engines use alt text to understand the content of images, further enriching their comprehension of your page.
- Natural Link Building: When other websites find your content valuable and informative, they might use relevant anchor text when linking to your pages. This natural link building, earned through high-quality content and strategic anchor text implementation, can further strengthen your website’s authority and ranking potential.
Harmful Anchor Text Strategies for SEO
Remember, while adding in keywords to anchor seems like a great SEO strategy, overusing exact-match keywords or keyword stuffing can harm your website’s SEO and user experience.
Search engines prioritize natural-sounding anchor text, and users appreciate transparency. So, by focusing on creating informative and engaging links you can benefit both your audience and your SEO efforts.
Anchor Text Examples
Examples are always helpful! While anchor text can take many forms, these are the 3 most important types of anchor text that every SEO beginner should look at.
1. Phrase Match
This anchor text type uses the exact phrase you want people to search for in the linked URL. It’s more natural as it provides users more information on the link, but using it sparingly, as overuse can look unnatural!
- Example: Imagine you wrote a chapter about baking chocolate chip cookies. Your phrase match anchor text could be: “Learn the secret recipe for chocolate chip cookies here!”
2. Partial Match
A partial match anchor text is when you use a similar phrase instead of the exact one. This less strict phrase match is great as it gives you more flexibility in the sentence you are writing.
It strikes a balance between offering context without the over optimization.
- Example: For the same cookie chapter about baking chocolate chip cookies, a partial match might be: “Discover delicious cookie recipes you’ll love!”
3. Image Alt Text
This fun anchor text type applies to clickable images.
What is Alt Text?
The alt text is where you want to describe the image, and that phrase is what populates when your image file doesn’t load for users. This is important for SEO, as you are able to describe the image file for search engines, and it helps with accessibility.
Example:
NOTE: If you have not optimized images when uploading them into your CMS media file before, there is a section to write the title, alt text, caption, and description.
Alt Text is what populates when the media file does not load.
Resources for Anchor Text
Looking for helpful information on Anchor Text?
These guides, tools, and resources will help you learn everything there is about Anchor Text in SEO.
- Google’s Anchor Text Placement Guidelines
- Moz’s Anchor Text Best Practices
- How to Create Jump Links in WordPress
- HubSpot’s What is Image Alt Text
We hope you are able to find this guide for beginners useful! For any questions be sure to reach out or leave a comment below.
Happy Optimizing 🙂
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