Get to Know Your SEO: All About Anchor Text And Why It Matters

Search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO, involves a lot of moving and complex parts.

That’s just one reason many marketing professionals will rely on an SEO reseller to handle the more complicated aspects of website optimization. But even if you outsource your SEO, it’s a good idea to become a bit more familiar with some of the basic concepts involved in search engine optimization. That way, you’ll know that you’re following the (unofficial) rules and that you’ll be able to communicate with your team on this topic.

Anyone who’s ever read content on a website — whether it be a piece of breaking news from a major media outlet or a frivolous listicle that is meant to entertain — has likely noticed numerous examples of anchor text. While you may not think twice about these links (or may merely click them out of curiosity), the reality is that anchor text can play an important part in your SEO strategy. Let’s take a closer look at the function of anchor text, how it’s used, and why it even matters.

What Is Anchor Text?

First, let’s discuss what anchor text is. Simply put, anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink that you (the reader) can see. In most cases, it’s underlined and shown in a different color from the surrounding text to differentiate it from everything around it.

Good anchor text should inform the reader of what they can expect if they click on that link. Ideally, the anchor text should succinctly describe the linked page so that audiences will want to click and that search engines can gain a better understanding of the link’s context.

Are There Different Types of Anchor Texts?

In a word, yes. Anchor text can be used to link to an external website or to an internal page on the same website. But whether these links are internal or external, they can fall into one of several categories of anchor text.

One of the most popular options is branded anchor text. This is a link that displays your business or brand name as the anchor text (e.g., “Google”). Variations on branded anchor text might include your website’s full URL — also known as a naked link — or your site name (e.g., “https://www.google.com” or “Google.com,” respectively).

Keywords will also appear in anchor text quite frequently. We’ll delve into the importance of using keywords in anchor text as part of an SEO strategy in the next section, but you might notice instances of article titles, exact or partially matching keywords, or related keywords in anchor text. This can provide some extra context for both search engines and web users.

You may also see anchor text that includes some generic directions for readers. For example, anchor text may include the phrase “click here” or “read more” as a means of guiding web users to the next step. This type of anchor text isn’t always ideal, but it can serve a purpose.

In some cases, anchor text can also serve as a source attribution (for articles that cite where their statistics come from, for example), which can include anything from the name of the academic journal to the numerical fact being referenced. This may not be a key part of your own SEO strategy, but it’s a practice you might use when creating blog content for your website.

Why Does Anchor Text Matter for SEO?

Above, we hinted that anchor text is one facet used in search engine optimization. It might seem like a small detail, but the words you choose to display in your anchor text (or the words chosen by others to link to your website) can make a big difference.

That’s because backlinks are still a key part of SEO tactics. The backlinks your site receives, assuming they’re from reputable sources, can help build your online awareness and overall search ranking. If an amazing site links to yours, they’re basically giving Google an endorsement of your business. And by ensuring that the anchor text is relevant to your website, this will provide both Google and readers with additional information that could increase clicks (and subsequent web traffic).

When a site receives backlinks, they’ll start to make up that brand’s backlink profile. This profile can have a substantial impact on your site’s authority and ranking. While the referring domain’s authority will carry the most weight, on-page factors within the anchor text itself can also come into play. For instance, if an important keyword is used in the anchor text (particularly if it’s within a title or a title tag), this can strengthen your backlink profile. That said, utilizing the same exact anchor text over and over again will hurt more than help; to ensure a diverse backlink profile, you’ll want to optimize it for certain phrases without going overboard.

That wasn’t always the tactic used, however. Because anchor text was one of the best ways for Google to recognize how relevant or valuable a website was, people went crazy for exact keyword match anchor text — and they were rewarded for it. But as Google’s algorithms and ranking signals have evolved, that’s no longer the case. While anchor text can still provide information about how relevant a website is, it can also make a site seem spammy or over-optimized. After 2012’s Penguin update, Google stopped rewarding websites that were purposefully trying to game the system through low-quality links with exact match anchor text. Now, using those same techniques can end up getting your site penalized.

That doesn’t mean you should steer clear of utilizing anchor text as part of your SEO strategy, though. You’ll just need to be a lot more intentional and cautious — which is true of most aspects of search engine optimization circa now.

What Are Some Anchor Text Best Practices?

Now that you know a little more about anchor text and how it’s often used, it’s a good time to talk about some dos and don’ts for SEO.

Much like with content creation and keyword usage, the anchor text you create (and gather) should be relevant and valuable. Long gone are the days when you could get away with unrelated anchors or unnatural phrases. Your anchor text should feel organic and tell the reader what they can expect by clicking. If the keyword looks jarring or the anchor text is deliberately vague, you’ll want to rewrite it. In general, you should avoid anything that comes off as spammy, generic, or misleading. Neither web users nor Google like to be fooled — and chances are that if you do manage to get some clicks out of it, your bounce rate will likely go up.

When creating internal links (meaning from one page of your website to another), you’ll want to use anchor text carefully. If you have an existing article that relates to a new piece of content, you should by all means add a link to it and make sure that the anchor text provides some useful context. However, you shouldn’t link for the sake of linking. If you have too much anchor text, especially in a shorter piece of content, readers will quickly dismiss any value you may provide and consider the page to be on the spammy side.

Although you won’t have total control over the anchor text used in every backlink to your site, remember that Google doesn’t expect your backlink profile to look perfect. In fact, that could actually set off some alarm bells. You shouldn’t panic if some of your backlinks don’t contain a keyword you’re targeting. If you develop a link-building strategy, you may have a bit more say in how the links back to your site will look.

In the end, anchor text is just one of many facets to an SEO strategy. And while Google has become more strict in how it evaluates anchor text, you’ll want to take full advantage of the opportunity to optimize your site’s anchor text in the interest of eliciting clicks and building a killer backlink profile.