From an SEO perspective, anchor text is more important than the body text. In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about anchor text SEO.
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the clickable, visible text in a hyperlink that leads users to another web page or resource. Anchor text is often underlined or highlighted to give users an idea of what they will find after clicking the link. Search engines use anchor text as a ranking signal to understand the content of the linked page, so anchor text is very important for SEO. On a page, anchor text looks like this:
In the source code, it is reflected as follows:
Is anchor text important for SEO?
SEOs are well aware of the importance of internal and external links. But what about the text they’re wrapped around? Do you still need to care about it? The answer is of course yes.
Anchor text is a ranking factor - it plays a role in SEO by providing additional information about the linking page . Therefore, it is a strong relevance signal. This means that it can affect page rankings.
Google's initial document (paragraph 2.2) tells us exactly this. Also, some tweets from John Mueller support this statement:
However, real-life case studies can further prove Google’s claims. For example, Edge of the Web managed to increase the number of users of a client’s blog by 88% simply by updating the anchor text, and increased page views for one key page in the section by more than 500%.
Anchor text has a huge **impact on website search results . According to Google, anchor text is **one of the ways they create title links on SERPs .[](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link#page-titles)
Additionally, SEOs often observe that properly added anchor text also helps in getting featured snippets and rich results on SERPs . Here’s what the Google Search Center documentation says about optimizing anchor text as one of the ways to get sitelinks:
The same information was stated in a Google patent and explained by Bill Slawski a long time ago.
In addition to SERP appearance and ranking, anchor text also constitutes user experience . It helps to navigate the page, understand the content of the linked page, and enhance content accessibility for users using screen readers.
Finally, if used properly, relevant links and their anchor text can keep users on the site longer and help reduce bounce rates . Relevant links on a page with clear and attractive anchor text can increase click confidence. In other words, anchor text encourages users to move from one page to another.
Anchor text type
There are many types of anchor text you can use. Some of them are more SEO-friendly than others, so be sure to double-check the following anchor text types:
- Generic : Click here, this, official link, more info – these are all common words that don’t describe the linked page. Example: On-page SEO is important, read more about it here .
- Exact match : The anchor text exactly matches the target keyword. Example: YouTube SEO is needed to get your video to the top.
- Partial match or phrase match : This means that the anchor text contains other words in addition to the keyword. For example, search engines such as Bing have slightly different SEO than Google (Bing's SEO is a keyword).
- Contextual : This is not a keyword-centric anchor, but rather contextual (easy to tell apart — even if you remove the link, the essence doesn’t change). Example: If you find some underperforming pages, consider following the basic rules of landing page optimization.
- Page Title : This is when the full title of the page is used as an anchor. It is often used to provide additional reading material, related resources, etc. Example: Here is our article on 8 essential HTML tags for SEO .
- Brand : In this case, the brand name is used as an anchor. Example: Conducting complex SEO audits and research using SEO tools.
- Call to Action : At this point CTA is used as an anchor.
- Naked Link : In this case, the anchor text is the link itself. Example: If you need accurate SEO tools, visit sidelineplay.com .
- Image : Officially, it is not text, but an alternative text for an image that is an anchor.
There are also black hat SEO types of anchor text. You shouldn’t use them, but be sure to be aware of:
- Irrelevant : A situation where the context of the anchor text is irrelevant to the linked page.
- Hidden links : This is link text that is only visible to search engines. This is considered a manipulative practice - your site may be penalized for cloaking links.
Best Anchor Text Strategy
In a recent SEO panel, Google Technical Writer Lizzi Sassman pointed out that "here" is still bad link text. But what other requirements does an anchor text have to have in order to be effective for SEO, besides not here ?
Make your anchor text descriptive
Since anchor text is considered a relevance signal, it should be as relevant and descriptive as possible. From the anchor text, it should be clear what the linked page is about.
Here’s what Google says in its SEO Getting Started Guide :
Using text that is off-topic or unrelated to the content of the linked page.
In most cases the URL of the page is used as the anchor text, although this certainly has legitimate uses, such as promoting or citing the address of a new website.”
Don’t keyword stuff your anchor text
Over-optimization is never a good idea. Anchor text filled with keywords is unappealing to users and suspicious to search engines.
Using keywords, whether exact or partial match, is beneficial until it starts to look unnatural or incorrect.
Make it more attractive
Boring anchors are useless. What’s the point of creating a link if no one is willing to click it?
For this reason, you should keep naked links and generic anchor text to a minimum. Instead, try making them more attractive:
| avoid | Change to |
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| If you need more details about SEO audits, click here. | Read on for more details on SEO audits and how the SEO PowerSuite tool can help. |
Diversified anchors
Long ago, Google’s Matt Cutts assured us that multiple internal links with the same anchor text would not hurt a site’s ranking. However, he then added that this is only true if we create natural internal links for a better user experience, as part of site navigation and breadcrumbs.
However, too many links from the same anchor may seem unnatural and spammy. This is when you may feel that Google’s anti-spam algorithm is working against you.
The rule of diversity applies to both internal linking and link building. To support this statement, here are some interesting examples:
- Zyppy recently conducted a correlation study of 23 million internal links and concluded that the more variations in incoming anchor text, the higher the number of Google search clicks.
- Authority Hacker took a completely different approach, analyzing a dataset of 100,000 URLs that ranked in the top 20 for different keywords. Still, their results were similar to those of Zappy: the higher the ranking, the more unique backlink anchors a page showed. This is fairly predictable — if you have more backlinks, then you should get a greater variety of anchors.
But how do you diversify your anchor text? You can choose your approach:
a) You can stick to a certain percentage of “off the shelf” anchor text types. For example, Nathan Gotch recommends following a very specific rule:
- 70% – Branded anchor text
- 20% – Naked Links
- 5% – Generic Anchor Text
- <5% – Partially matched anchor text
- <1% – Exact match
However, I would venture to say that this ready-made solution does not guarantee that it will work for your website.
b) You can derive your own anchor text distribution model by reverse engineering. To do this, you need to analyze the anchor text diversity of your SERP competitors.
First, you need to search for your target keyword and look at the top 2-3 (or more) results. Then go to SEO SpyGlass, create a project for your first competitor, and go to Backlink Profile > Anchor Text :
You will see the overall anchor text diversity of the domain as well as a list of all anchor texts and the number of backlinks for each.
Then you need to filter by brand, exact match, generic anchor text, etc. and check the number of backlinks of each type. Next, calculate the percentage of the total number of backlinks.
Do this for each competitor and calculate the average.
That's your approximate anchor diversity range.
c) You can diversify your anchor texts based on your overall business needs. So, if your website is newer or less well-known and your goal is to grow your audience, you can start by driving non-branded search traffic to your website. So, focus on exact and partial match non-branded anchor texts.
If you want to build brand awareness, you can bet on anchor text of the [brand name + exact match keyword] type.
Pay attention to the surrounding text
The surrounding text (or annotation text) can be just as important as the anchor text. Why do I say "can"? Here's the thing, Google has a patent that says that text within a certain distance of the anchor text will be indexed to better understand the meaning of the linked page.
However, if you use a lot of generic, non-descriptive anchors, it’s best to make sure the surrounding text provides context for search engines. Ideally, your annotation text should include your target keywords.
Remember first link priority
There is a belief in the SEO community that if there are two links on a page pointing to the same resource, search engines will only count the first link. Therefore, if you want your page to rank for a specific keyword, you should use it as an anchor in the first link.
This isn't 100% true, but it makes sense to try it for yourself.
Audit the anchor text of your backlinks
You need to regularly audit backlinks and their anchor texts to ensure your website backlink profile is healthy. A large number of identical keywords or spammy anchor texts can be a sign of negative SEO. The easiest and most time-saving way to do this is to use SEO SpyGlass.
First, launch the app and go to Backlink Profile > Anchor Text . Scan the anchor text list and look for some irrelevant, weird, empty anchor texts and anchor texts used in too many backlinks.
For example, in my SEO PowerSuite project, I found that the anchor text "watch epic movies online" was clearly irrelevant to our tool. Therefore, I analyzed whether I should consider disavowing these backlinks by looking at the number of backlinks and referring domains. In my case, I didn't want to pay too much attention to these backlinks because there were only 3 of them and they were unlikely to cause ranking issues or manual actions from Google.
Audit your internal anchor text
Although you have full control over the anchor text used on your site, it’s worthwhile to perform an internal link audit occasionally. You may find some anchor text that is missing, non-descriptive, or irrelevant. Fix these issues immediately and see positive results.
This time, you need WebSite Auditor. Create your project, go to Site Structure > Pages , and do a quick check of the links to your most important pages.
Important: You cannot separate your anchor text strategy from your internal linking strategy or link building strategy.
How to Build Anchor Text Lists for Internal Linking and Link Building
Surprisingly, the process is simple:
- Collect the pages in Rank Tracker that you want to attract internal and external links to. These should be your key pages – product pages and pages that bring in a lot of traffic and conversions.
- Identify the key keywords for each page. These are your primary anchor texts.
- Enrich your main anchors with synonyms, related and descriptive terms, and write them down in a document to share with your copywriter or anyone who updates your page. Here’s a simple example:
Additional Tips
- When doing link building, use LinkAssistant . With this outreach tool, managing backlink prospects becomes easier for both teams and individual SEO professionals. Moreover, its features allow you to specify anchor text for each backlink prospect or source:
- When doing internal linking, use Website Auditor , especially its visualization tool. Here you can take into account all the details of your internal links and specify the anchor text for each linked page:
December 2022 Link Spam Update Impact
Google’s fight against backlink manipulation began with Penguin in 2012 and continues to this day.
As you may know, Google just completed another link spam update. Now, Google uses SpamBrain AI to detect unnatural links and eliminate their impact on search results.
Therefore, links detected as unnatural will not be counted and no manual action will be taken . However, this does not mean that you will not see a drop in rankings: if a link was helping you before the update, it may no longer help you rank now.
For example, Glenn Gabe shared on Twitter how the update affected several sites. He noticed that the affected links were primarily very obvious unnatural exact match links.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use exact match keywords anymore. But you may need to be more cautious with your links. Here we come back to the lack of anchor text variety and keyword stuffing.
hint
You can quickly check your backlinks’ penalty risk in SEO SpyGlass ( Backlink Profile > Penalty Risk ):
Next to each backlinking page, you will see a list of its penalty risk and detected factors. Study the information given carefully as there may be some factors related to the anchor text.
Direct and indirect benefits of anchor text links:
reader:
First, let me talk about the direct benefits of anchor text from the reader's perspective. First, of course, readers will get more relevant links that they are interested in (and your bounce rate will go down). Anchor text also helps increase the average time a reader stays on your site (and the number of page views on your blog).
Important: When linking back to your articles, make sure to only link to relevant topics. Irrelevant links will turn off your readers.
Benefits of SEO:
It’s been proven that earning backlinks is directly correlated with high rankings. And, by using the right anchor text, you can help search engines understand the best context for your page.
In fact, I noticed on ShoutMeLoud that when I added more contextually relevant internal links, it improved the rankings of the target pages.
If your website/blog is using WordPress platform, you can use the plugins mentioned below to improve your internal linking structure.
By optimizing our anchor titles, we are not only helping our readers, but we are also helping search engine bots better understand what our site is about.
What about you? Do you pay attention to the anchor text when you link to your old articles or any other articles outside your domain ?
If you find the information in this article useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and Google plus.
Here are some more handpicked essential SEO articles for you to learn:
- What are backlinks and why are they important
- What are Dofollow and No-Follow in SEO (Beginner's Guide)
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