Intro to Anchor Text

If you are at all familiar with the world of SEO, and Backlinks, you may have heard the term “anchor text” thrown around. But what is anchor text? And more importantly why should you care? Hold on to your socks folks because your about to be taken on a magical journey into the world of anchor text for SEO.

What is Anchor Text

Let’s start with the basics – Just what is anchor text? Anchor text is clickable element of a hyperlink that is visible to the end user. It frequently appears underlined or in color on webpages and email such as this link to our article about how a backlink builder can improve google rank.

Why is Anchor Text Important?

Backlinks, or inbound links are frequently cited to be the biggest ranking factor on Google and other search engines. However, all backlinks are not created equal and anchor text can impact how search engines understands the context of the link.

What does the code look like?

If you are working on a WYSIWYG style editor or hard coding your site you may need to insert ahref code to build out your link and anchor text.

<a href=”http://www.yourhyperlink.com “> Anchor Text</a>

Types of Anchor Text

Anchor text can take many forms and we’ll cover a few of them here with examples:

Exact Keyword or Keyword Phrase Match

This is a link with anchor text that is an exact match for your target keyword.

Naked URL

Example: the page https://infiniteelectrician.com/ wants to rank for Local Spokane electrician their and exact match anchor text would be : “ Local Spokane Electrician “

This is a link where the anchor text is simply the URL itself

Using our previous example of the local electrician a naked URL would appear as https://infiniteelectrician.com

Branded

This is often the most common link anchor text sites receive. It simply contains the name of the brand or company being linked to.

Again using our previous example, the link text would simply read: “ infinite electric.”

Random or Generic

Another common occurrence is random or generic anchor text it frequently shows us as, “click here” or “learn more.”

Anchor Text Link Profile

Over optimization of backlinks can cause problems and penalties. It’s important to remember that since backlinking are the most important factor to you google rank you don’t want to do anything shady or over-optimize your links by guest posting overoptimized anchor text. A healthy link profile typically contains mostly branded, naked URLs and random anchor text. This is typically the way natural links occur. Of sites we manage, we typically see up to 80% of links falling into one of these categories.

What Tools Can Help?

You might be saying keeping track of my backlink health seems like a big task, and well your right it is. However, making sure your links and anchor text are of good quality and healthy incredibly important. Luckily there are quite a few great tools out there that can assist you such as; Moz, Ahrefs, SEM Rush, and Majestic. Remember that these are premium tools and they often carry a premium price, and as always properly using these tools is the biggest factor in their impact on your link profile health.

We hope this has been informative for anyone looking to learn more about anchor text and it’s effect on backlinks, and search engine rankings. Check out the Digalitics Blog for more helpful tips, tricks and information on search engine optimization and digital marketing.