What is anchor text? 

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text on a website. The text in a hyperlink. You’ll probably recognise it as the blue bit of text underlined on a website - the bit you clearly click on! 

Just like this text link to Wild SEO Agency’s services page (where you can find out more about building links in general!) 

Purpose of anchor text 

Anchor text helps the users of your website to know what will happen when they click on a link. It directs people from one place on your site to another page, section, part of your site. It’s also read by search engines to help them know whether your website is being helpful and directing users to relevant, informative places. 

Anchor text can be either an internal link (taking your website users to somewhere else on your own website) or, it can take you to another business or organisations website. 

There are different types of anchor text 

1. Generic

‘Click below’ is a common generic anchor.

2. Exact-match

An ‘exact match’ uses a keyword that is applicable to the page that the link will take the user to. For example: ‘website development’ linking to a page about website development. 

3. Images

Whenever an image is linked, Google will use the text contained in the image's alt attribute (the descriptive information that describes an image if the website user cannot see the image) as the anchor text. 

Want to know more about image SEO? We’ve written a whole blog about it. 

4. URL link

A URL, or naked link, uses a website URL address as the anchor text. Such as: www.wildseo.agency… it’s an obvious, but straightforward choice if the URL is clear and easy to understand. 

Anchor text SEO best practice 

The best anchors in the boat world are reliable and keep things steady. They can be trusted. 

A big part of SEO is to please the search engines and keep your website high in the search rankings! But, we think that it’s even more important to create content that is easy to use for your audience to read and understand. 

To be both SEO and user friendly, anchor text should be short, relevant to the page it links to and include helpful key words. 

Keep anchor text short 

There isn’t a limit to how long your anchor text can be. But, it’s good to keep it as concise and as accurate as possible.

Make anchor text relevant  

When writing your anchor text, ask yourself: do these words describe the content on the page I’m linking to? 

A highly relevant anchor link can increase the chances of a page ranking higher for the content it covers. 

Use keywords in anchor text 

BUT don’t over use keywords on repeat. What do we mean? 

Internal linking is recommended, but be careful with the anchor text you use to link to your own pages. If too many links to a page all use the same anchor text, even if they're on your own site, Google might sense spammy behaviour.

Try to be original! How many times have you seen the generic phrases: 

click here … find out more… join in… ?

This is an opportunity to be creative, be helpful and increase the ranking of your website! 

For more detail, and practical beginner guides, on link building best practice we recommend a snoop around SEO wizards Moz’s SEO Learning Center.  

And, if you want help building links on your site, or a more practical tutorial on adding links to your website - please get in touch!