Using Anchor Text Correctly For SEO

If you are a blogger and conscious about improving search engine ranking of your blog, you would appreciate the importance that anchor text plays in search rankings. Following are a few set of important information that I have learned over a period of last few months that can act as a guideline for correct use of anchor text.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible and click-able text in a hyperlink. For example, refer to the two styles of writing which convey the same information as given below.

1. 10 minute mail is an excellent temporary email service. To know more about it, click here.
2. If you are looking for an excellent temporary email service, we strongly recommend you to check out 10 minute mail.

As you can notice, anchor text for first bullet is <here> and for the second bullet is <10 minute mail>. In either cases, this text is giving descriptive information about the information content contained in the hyperlink. Looking at the hyperlink, a reader could understand the context and use his judgment for making decision as to whether to click on the link or not.

A good anchor text would provide a crisp descriptive information about the hyperlink and use the right keywords that related directly to content of the hyperlink. In the bullet 1 above, <here> as a keyword has no relation to the 10 minute mail service and hence is a wrong way to use anchor text. A good and recommended way is as shown in bullet 2.

Is Anchor Text Important?

Yes. Anchor text is taken in to account by search engines for rank computation. The reason is that the anchor text would typically be relevant to the hyperlink web page and can act as a small keyword description of the hyperlink content. Aggregating information about a large number of anchor texts referring to a hyperlink(website) would give search engine a fair idea about the keywords that the hyperlink(website) is related to.

From a search engine perspective, it would like to provide searcher with the best possible results based on the keywords searched. So taking anchor text in to account, would ensure that the searcher is able to land on the right page using the closest keywords to the subject. These closest keywords could be made out using the anchor text used for that hyperlink as seen on various sites.

Fine It’s Important But Should I really bother about it?

You should look at it something like this => If Mr X hear good things about you from your neighborhood, he would rank you high in his mind.  Mr. X would rank you low if he finds that eg that most of the people whom he believes are good; are talking bad things about you. Similarly if you seem to be talking good about persons whom Mr. X has clearly concluded as bad, he would doubt your credentials as well.

The story is similar with anchor text. If you have a lot of back links from good sites with the right anchor text keywords, it is great for you. Similarly, you are also expected to use the right anchor text for all your outbound/internal links and avoid linking to possible bad sites.

Great, I understand it now. Are there any additional things to be taken care of?

Yes, there are a few points which should be kept in mind wrt anchor text

• Length Of Anchor Text – Although there is no limit on the length of anchor text that one can use, recommended anchor text length is not more then 6-8 words.
• Repetition - One might get tempted to link to one’s own blog post from another blog post using anchor text. But that doesn’t mean you sit and write in such a way that you fill the whole post with various keyword combination as anchor text. A general guideline is use your judgment to decide how much repetition is too much. Read the post aloud and if you find that the content is human readable without a feel of repetition of information – you are good to go.
• Location - Sometimes, it’s also important where the anchor text link is placed and what is it’s click frequency. It is preferable to keep it at places where it is expected to be seen and clicked more eg in beginning of posts.
• Outbound Links – It is recommended to link only to good outbound sites to avoid your site being seen in bad light by search engines. If you are doubtful about the outbound site, use <nofollow> links.
• Inbound Links – Similar to the analogy given using Mr X above, if you are getting back-links from high ranking sites, it is going to be useful for you and you would be considered a good site by search engines. It is also important that the inbound links are <follow> links rather than being <nofollow> links
  
• Comments – A lot of time you would see people coming and commenting on your site just for the sake of creating and outbound link to their own site with no useful point being made in the comment itself.  Ideally you should again use your judgment to decide whether to admit the content or not. While it is believed that outbound links in the comments are treated differently from the ones in the core content, any outbound links to spurious sites should be avoided or if admitted be made <nofollow>

If you have any other inputs to make OR feel that the above information is not totally correct – do update about it in the comments. If you found the post useful, do share it using the buttons available below the post.

Image Courtesy – Overstock.com

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