SEO is ever changing and challenging the professionals to gain good search rankings. Along with the algorithm changes, SEO professionals are also changing their perspective towards SEO techniques and adopting new methods and platforms;. But sometimes little changes on site would bring drastic change in the search rankings. We all know that, there are more than 200 SEO affecting factors and today we are going to talk about little yet effective factor: Anchor Text.
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor Text is the visible text that is clickable or highlighted link that drives user to the target webpage. Simply, Anchor text is the clickable text in the content that takes user to the another webpage.
For Example:
Learn more about SEO Optimization Factors to gain visibility in the search engines.
In the above text, “SEO Optimization Factors” is highlighted that drives you to another article on SEO factors; here “SEO Optimization Factors” is the anchor text.
Syntax:
<a href=”http://www.digitalverge.net/”>Digital Verge: Anchor Text</a>Anchor Text & SEO
Every webpage of your website should be well optimized in terms of on-page factors, keyword research; in short it should be keyword targeted webpage. Anchor Text is yet another space where you can target a relevant keyword and drive the traffic to a relevant webpage.
Search Engines count the descriptive text in the anchor text to determine the relevancy of the page with the other linked pages, that in turn increases the SEO strength. Moreover, anchor text is the important aspect of the link building (internal linking/external linking).
Best Practices of Anchor Text
Anchor Text is the most significant space to target the keywords and gain rankings for the keywords. Recent updates of Google Penguin, has warned webmasters not to use anchor text to build artificial backlinks and manipulate both search engines and users, that could cause penalizing the website. This doesn’t always apply to landing pages built by tools like Kartra because these aren’t built to rank in the search results, they’re more geared to collect optins.
It’s two totally different goals.
So now, what is the best practice to use anchor text?
Search engines are smart enough to check the relevancy of the keyword, anchor text and linked webpage. So, see that keyword embedded in the anchor text should be relevant to the follow up webpage; and it is recommended to have up to 5-10 anchor texts in a webpage. When relevancy is met, then there is no point of getting penalized.
For example: If you want to link the current webpage of “Digital Marketing” to the “Services” page, then anchor text can be anyone of the following:
Services
Our Services
Digital Marketing Services
Our Digital Marketing Services
Click Here for Services
Click Here for Our Services
Know Our Services
And also remember, the linked webpage should be relevant and should talk about the services.
Implementation of Anchor Text can be both in internal linking and external linking, this would increase the SEO strength. Always make sure that internal linking in the website uses targeted keywords in the anchor text and guides the users to the relevant pages. Similarly in the external linking use the same strategy of targeting keywords and increase the search rankings.
Optimized anchor texts would not only satisfy the SEO factors, but also guides the readers of the website to the read more about your website and understand your business. So be wise, while using the anchor texts. Share your thoughts in the comment section below!
