Anchor Text
Hyperlinks will be very familiar to you. Since you learnt to how to click you have been spotting and clicking on hyperlinks. You can tell which part of the text is a hyperlink because it looks different. A hyperlink may be underlined and/or a different colour from the rest of the text. (On Medium, its just underlined)
Anchor text refers to the word or phrase highlighted in the hyperlink.
It’s the anchor text that tells the reader what they’ll find if they click the link.
It’s the anchor text that tells Google the search term that the destination website should be found for.
The most misused anchor text on the web is click here. Your anchor text should be used as a signpost to the content it links to.
Use your anchor text wisely to:
- Tell your readers what to expect if they click.
- Link back to and credit other people’s work you are building on or quoting.
- Promote the destination website for the search terms in your anchor text on Google.
Smashing magazine has great advice for writing good anchor text:
Usually I prefer to avoid using only verbs as anchors because they’re vague and often don’t give a clear picture of what to expect. Rather, nouns enable the user to easily scan the link anchor and quickly grasp what they’re clicking to without having to read the entire sentence or paragraph. An alternative option would be to use verbs and nouns but with this approach some links might become way too lengthy.
Choose lots of different words and phrases for your anchor text, rather than the same phrase every time. Google doesn’t like it when you try to game the Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs).
Feel free to link back to this article as imaginatively as you like!
