What Is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the text that can be clicked on in a link. Best practices for SEO say that the anchor text should be related to the page you’re linking to, not just a random string of words.
Anchor text in blue with an underline is the most common because it is the standard on the web. However, you can change the color and underline with html code. Anchor text with keywords is one of the many ways search engines figure out what a web page is about.
So, if you had a page that talked about the basics of SEO,
Example of a bad link: Click here!
Some good examples of anchor text: Click here to find out more about SEO, the basics of SEO, what SEO is, and how to learn SEO.
Anchor Text Exact Match
The anchor text is also called the label or title of the link. The words in the anchor text help search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing decide where to place the page in their results.
On the web, links with no anchor text are called naked URLs or URL anchor texts. Anchor text will look different in different browsers, and if you use it right, it can help the linked page rank for those keywords in search engines.
With an exact match anchor text, the words that are highlighted are the same ones that are the page’s main focus.
e.g. Anchor text on this page that is an exact match would be the keyword “anchor text” with a link to https://newsdegree.com/seo-anchor-text, like this: anchor text.
Changes to the Anchor Text
Google’s spam filter is set off when websites build a lot of exact match anchor text links. It doesn’t make sense for all the web pages that link to your site to use the same anchor text. Anchor text can vary a little bit, just like a lot of links on the internet are just naked URLs.
Manipulation of Anchor Text
Since anchor text is taken into account by search engines to determine relevance, it is possible to over-optimize your links.
Keyword-Specific Anchor-Text Targeting
Anchor text from the links that linkbuilders (SEOs that specialize in developing links to websites) construct from other websites is typically under their complete control. In order for an SEO’s page to rank for a specific keyword, it needs to include anchor texts that contain that term.
Words Used As A Link In Other Websites’ Content
To put it simply, a backlink is a link that leads back to your website. When other websites link to yours, the wording of their anchor links is known as “backlink anchor text.” Search engines use the anchor text of these backlinks to evaluate which keywords a page should rank highest for.
Unidirectional Anchor Text Backlinks
You have a one-way anchor text backlink if website A uses an anchor text link to website B but website B does not use an anchor text link to website A. Search engine optimizers value one-way anchor text backlinks for the PageRank “juice” they pass from one domain to another. Search engine rankings are thought to improve in correlation with the number of inbound links using specific keyword anchor text from pages with high PageRank.
Overuse of Anchor Text
Having too much anchor text on a page is similar to having too many keywords on a page. An overabundance of anchor text occurs when a single web page uses an excessive number of keywords to link to many internal pages, or to the same page using multiple variations of the anchor text. Overusing anchor text is a spammy, user-unfriendly practice, and can have your site penalized by Google.
Anchor-Text Dissemination
Due to the efforts of link builders, certain keywords will account for a larger percentage of a page’s total anchor text distribution than others will.
Anchor Text That Is Clearly Trying to Spam
Spammy anchor texts are links whose anchor texts have no relevance to either the linked-to or the linked-from website. To harm a competitor’s website or individual through bad SEO and Google bombing, spammy anchor texts are a frequent black hat SEO practice. This includes using them to briefly rank for competitive phrases like “pay day loans” or “buy viagra.”
What is the Difference Between Natural Anchor Text Vs Unnatural Anchor Text?
Sometimes, when people link to your website, they’ll use anchor language that doesn’t accurately describe the content of the linked page. Similar to naked URLs, however, these are perfectly normal and not penalized by search engines.
Unnatural anchor text distribution, on the other hand, can be indicated by things like an absence of bare URLs, an abundance of anchor text, or a large number of targeted one-way anchor text backlinks.
If Google and other search engines determine that user experience has been negatively affected as a result of a website’s focus on manipulating anchor text, they may punish the page.
If you make great content, people will want to connect to it and use natural anchor language when they do so.
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