What is Anchor Text (and What Does it Mean for SEO)?
Posted on 25th October 2023
Anchor text is an integral part of your website’s SEO strategy – it has the power to enhance your site’s visibility and rankings on search engines like Google. In this article, learn what anchor text is all about and how to optimise it for SEO.
Understanding anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text embedded within a hyperlink on a webpage. You can easily identify a hyperlink, as it’ll appear in a different colour and be bold or underlined to make it stand out from the surrounding text. Anchor text tells your web visitors what they can expect to see once they click the link. The more descriptive the anchor text is, the better the user experience.
Anchor text and its impact on SEO
It’s not just web visitors that rely on anchor text for clues about what they’ll find on the linked page – search engines need to know this information for their ranking algorithms. By ensuring your anchor text accurately describes the linked content, you can help search engines understand your website’s internal structure – how the pages are interconnected. Additionally, in the case of external web links, search engines use anchor text to help determine the trustworthiness and authority of the linked page.
The main types of anchor text
Many businesses use phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘learn more’ as generic anchor text that doubles up as a call-to-action. However, such terms don’t tell the visitor what to expect, so using something more informative for pages you want to link to is better. Consider the following:
Exact-match anchor text – the keyword or phrase used as anchor text exactly matches the content topic on the linked page. So, if we link to our web design page, you’ll see that the information is purely focused on the benefits of web design with it’seeze.
Partial-match anchor text – this is where the anchor text partly matches the primary keyword or topic found on a webpage. In this case, the anchor text importance of typography leads to a page titled ‘The Importance of Typography in Web Design’.
Branded anchor text – where the anchor text is a brand name that leads to a page about that specific brand. For example, we could use the anchor text it’seeze to link to our ‘About Us’ page.
Effective anchor text – tips and best practices
So that your anchor text appeals to both your web visitors and search engines, follow these guidelines:
Keep it short – five words or less is best because long or complex anchor text can be confusing and hard to read.
Make it relevant to the content on the linked page – to give users and search engines a contextual understanding of what they’ll find when they click through. The more accurate your anchor text is, the more likely you will boost your search engine rankings. Also, consider the surrounding text and make sure your anchor text fits into that naturally.
Don’t overuse keywords – excessively using keywords within anchor text can be seen as an attempt to manipulate search engines (and this can lead to your website being penalised – ranking lower in searches).
Anchor text: a powerful tool in your SEO arsenal
Search engines use anchor text to determine the topic of linked web pages. By including descriptive and relevant keywords in your anchor text, you can not only help boost your page’s rankings but also improve the user experience for your web visitors.
Did you know it’seeze now offers SEO services to help you increase your website visitors and get more conversions? We have two packages to choose from: complete search engine management, where we look after everything from competitor analysis to keyword tracking and ranking, and a step-by-step advice platform if you want to manage SEO yourself.
Learn more about our SEO services or contact Garry, your local it’seeze consultant, to discuss your requirements.
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