One of the pillars of SEO is linking, and the links are valued mainly based on the anchor text. Anchor text is the text that is displayed as hyperlinks. In other words, anchor texts can be called as the text used as a wrapper for hyperlinks. Anchor text is usually underlined and appears in blue by default. However, you can choose different colors for it and determine if it needs to be underlined or not. The importance of an anchor text in determining the value of the link is tremendous and hence it is the topic of discussion whenever SEO is being discussed. The anchor text is responsible for telling the readers where the link will take them to and so it needs to be relevant to the subject matter of the webpage it deals with.
Length
The length of the anchor text should be ideal. Gone are the days when short anchor texts were recommended. People have started using longer search queries and hence, you need to use longer anchor texts than before. This doesn’t mean that you need to use a whole sentence as your anchor text, but it just means that you need to have all the keywords that most users search for as your anchor text.
Domains
If you link the anchor text to old domains, it will add more value to the website because, old domains have higher authority compared to young domains. If your anchor text points to a domain created yesterday, it will not make even a miniscule difference to your page rank because the linked domain wouldn’t have gained any kind of authority. Therefore, find strong and old domains which can add value to your website.
Keywords
The next thing to be considered is the keywords. This shouldn’t be confused with the length. Here, I’m talking about the words used in the anchor text, not the length of the text. The keywords should exactly represent what the linked page talks about. For example, if the linked page deals with toys for toddlers, the best anchor text for this could be ‘toys for toddlers’ rather than just ‘click here’.
Linked Sites
The authority of the websites your anchor text links to, matters a lot. Therefore, always try to find high authority websites for your anchor texts. Even if you are not going to use the exact keywords to represent the subject of the webpage, linking to high authority sites will increase the ranking of your website. You can greatly benefit by just providing a link to a couple of definitions in Wikipedia for words used in your articles.
Secondary Keywords
It has been observed that Google takes into account only the first occurrence of a keyword regardless of the number of repetitions in the page. Therefore, act smart and pay attention to the keywords used. Even if all your anchor texts are going to link to the same page, change the keywords slightly to make Google’s algorithms consider each as a different link.
Finally, don’t try to over optimize by stuffing your webpage with too many links. If you do, your readers will not enjoy the reading experience. Just think what will happen to your article if they keep visiting the links instead of reading your article? You will definitely not want that to happen to your article. Therefore, provide links only where necessary and in the other places try to include information that the readers need to know rather than letting them learn from other sources.
About the Author
This guest post has been brought to you by Robin Mckenzie of Buycenturylink, a site that offers savings and current information on consumers’ broadband internet and cable. Click here to experience top-speed internet, excellent value, and award-winning security.