What is Anchor Text and How Should You Use It?

October 16, 2008 by Butterfly Filed under: SEO

Anchor text (also known as title text and phrase linking) is a visible hyperlink that you have within a web page. It can either take the user to another page within your website or to a totally different website. An example of this would be ‘SEO’ and that would be a link that would then lead the user to a webpage containing information about SEO. This is because hidden within that text is a URL, which the user cannot see unless they hover over the text and then it would be visible at the bottom left hand side of their screen. However it just makes it easier to read and looks more professional if displayed as anchor text.

There are two types of anchor text, the first being internal anchor text which is a link within the website that you are from. External anchor text involves getting inbound links to your site from other websites such as articles, blogs, forums, directories and so on.

Anchor text can be used to help search engine optimisation and it is known as anchor text optimisation. Search engines place a high importance on anchor text rather than just a normal link within a website. On the other hand they would not see it as important if the link does not take the user to content that is relevant to what the text is talking about. It helps to show more relevance for your website if used correctly and will help you rank higher for certain keywords that you wish to rank for, if used in your anchor text.

Some important points to consider when using anchor text is if you are using internal links make sure you use specific keywords related to the site the user will be directed to e.g. ‘article submission’ not generic keywords such as ‘click here’.That way the user will know at a glance what content the link will take them to and will only click if they wish to learn more about that content, it also has a better result within the search engines, concerning your SEO. Make sure that you put anchor text links in that are best for the user so they understand it easily and know what information the link will take them to.

Finally to sum it up you need to check that whichever keywords you use for your anchor text, is relevant and descriptive to what your site has to offer so that when you rank for that keyword in the search engines the user is getting information that they desire and not some content that takes them totally away from what they are looking for.