Anchor Text for SEO

Anchor Text for SEOThe text you use to link to other pages, the anchor text, plays an important role for SEO and achieving good rankings. When linking to other pages on your site try to use text links over images, and use keyword rich text that describes the page you are linking to. Try to avoid the use of generic anchor text such as 'click here', 'more' or 'home' etc.

While conducting your Website Promotion and Search Engine Optimization strategies such as SEO Link Building, it is easy for some webmasters to lose sight of how they use anchor text and the HTML anchor tag on their own website or blog.

Internal links, those pointing to URLs on your own website, and external linking, where you link to pages on other websites, are treated very differently by search engines. Here we discuss both types of linking strategies to help you get your SEO and Links working together to improve your search rankings.

The use of text linking instead of images and buttons is the best choice as search engines seem to favor these types of links and give them more weight as a ranking factor. For this reason you should try to use text links wherever possible, especially when linking to internal pages on your website.

Avoid the use of generic terms and phrases such as 'Home', 'Click Here', 'More' etc. Unless you wish to rank for these terms they serve little purpose with regards to SEO. You should strive to use related keywords within your anchor text, both for internal and external linking, both of which are described in more detail below.

Internal Anchor Text LinkingAnchor text for internal linking should always contain keywords related to the target page. Linking text containing two to three words seems to work best. Follow the same strategy for your website menu and site navigation links.

Only use related and relevant keywords that appear on the target page as opposed to the page containing the link. Try to avoid linking to the same page more than two or three times from the same web page as this can look spammy to search engines.

External Anchor Text LinkingFor SEO 2014, link building to external websites is still a relevant factor for your own website as search engines also look at the sites that you link out to when ranking your website. Again use relevant anchor text only.

We have seen some success in linking outward to other quality sites using our targeted keywords, but only link to well established, trusted, authority sites.

Linking to bad or unrelated websites can cost you ranking positions and in severe cases, such as linking to hacking websites etc., can get your site banned (sand-boxed).  It is also a good idea when external linking, to open the URL in a new browser window to ensure you do not lose your user if they click the link. Use the Target value of the anchor tag to specify "_blank" as the target for the new page.