WordPress SEO in 5 Minutes – What is Anchor Text?
Links are a familiar concept to all. When you click on a link, it’ll take you to the corresponding web page. Most of the time, links are presented with an “anchor text” to improve the reader’s experience. Confused? Don’t worry. This next WordPress article from our SEO team in Perth discusses the seemingly simple but important SEO factor – the Anchor Text. Enjoy.
What is an anchor text?
An anchor text is a word or short string of words that are clickable in a hyperlink. It is usually underlined and displayed in a different colour than the surrounding text. For example – if you need to link to this article from another page, you can use “What is Anchor Text?”. It is clear, short and gives the reader an apt description of what they can expect by clicking on this link.
The next WordPress article from our SEO team in Perth discusses on a seemingly simple, but important SEO factor – the Anchor Text.
What is it?
A word or short string of words that are clickable in a hyperlink. It is usually underlined and displayed in a different colour than the surrounding text. Example – if you need to link to this article from another page, you can use What is Anchor Text. It is clear, short and gives the reader an exact description of what they can expect by clicking on this link.
Different types
Both internal and external links need relevant anchor text, and it is important to understand the different types to avoid being penalized by search engines.
Branded – Brand name as an anchor, like The Computing Australia Group. Branded anchors run a risk of being penalized if they match a search query exactly. So, you need to be careful with these.
Naked link – Just a URL without a text. E.g., https://computingaustralia.com.au/
Site name – E.g. The Computing Australia Group
Exact match keywords – Focus keyword or keyphrase
Partial match or LSI keywords – Variations or synonyms of focus keyword. E.g., if keyphrase is ‘ecommerce platforms’, anchor text can be ‘top 3 ecommerce platforms’ or ‘top 3 platforms for ecommerce.’
Brand Name + Keyword – Anchor with the brand name and keyword. E.g., Brand name is ‘The Computing Australia Group’, and the keyword is ‘hosting package’ – Use Best Hosting Packages from The Computing Australia Group.
Article title – Exactly matches the post title, like the example we mentioned in the definition.
Generic links – Mostly call-to-action phrase like ‘Click here’, ‘Learn more’ and ‘this post’. Avoid these as they are vague and don’t tell people what a link is about and fail to utilize a link’s SEO value.
Image Alt Tag – When an image is linked, search engines will use the Image Alt Text as the anchor text.
What makes a good one?
You can’t control the anchor text for inbound links – other sites linking to your site. Ensure that your internal links follow good anchor text practices to utilize link building SEO.
Brief and clear
There is no right length for anchor text, but keep it as brief as possible while being clear. The word or phrase should generate interest as well as tell the reader clearly what the linked-to page is about.
Link relevancy
To send strong relevancy signals, links should point to content related to the topic of the source page. Your anchor text should be as descriptive of the target page as possible and contain relevant keywords or phrases to send strong relevancy signals. You’ll be penalized for linking to irrelevant target pages.
Keyword density and variation
Internal links are a good SEO practice but ensure that you don’t stuff keywords into the anchor text. Too many links with the same anchor text, even on your own site, will send a signal to Google for spammy behaviour. It is a good idea to keep the them natural by using different type as types explained above. This may help in getting better SEO results.
Talk to our web development experts in Perth to learn more about the subject or anything related to SEO and web development. Contact us today or email at sales@computingaustralia.group.
Jargon Buster
Alt tag: The alt tag is an HTML attribute that provides the textual information for an image on a web page.
LSI keywords: Latent Semantic Indexing keywords or LSI keywords are phrases that are semantically related to your target keyword.
by The Computing Australia Group