Index
Anchor text is a clickable hyperlink that is visible in various types in the form of exact terms, a partial phrase, a web link, or in the form of an image. Generally, it is often indicated in underlined form and rendered in blue or red colour, or any colour through HTML or CSS.
Usually, anchor text is to the point and created to be precisely relevant to the target page where it has to be linked to. Anchor text can guide search engines to understand how the link is to be directed from one place to another or its designation.
It play main in In Search engine optimization , As you know About Everyone want to promote their business digitally in the form of SEO Services, Also ancor text can be part of contextual information created by the users in the content. Again anchor text used in contextual information can be used as a designation link.
Evolution of Anchor text
Content related to a topic of the source page must be linked to some other relevant destination webpage. For example, a webpage can be about the best places in India. Now, in this case, a relevant link or a phrase or exact match must be provided to the Google search engine. To elaborate, a webpage on the best places in India can refer to something related to tourism or the best restaurants. However, providing links to websites with pictures of animals or some unrelated context might hurt the ranking in search engines.
In other words, search engines like Google pay close attention to how different anchor texts are linked to the other page or article, or look out for relevant search queries. All the links are closely scrutinised; especially, those that are used as additional indicators, containing information about context related to the existing page. Hence ensuring that you keep strong relevant links as your anchor text to the target page makes sense.
How over-optimization was culled with the introduction of the Penguin algorithm?
Google began to monitor and link relevant contextual pages when it was updated with the Penguin algorithm. The algorithm was so smartly written that it was able to process natural language with other factors such as link source and SEO based keywords, and understand whether they are relevant or not in terms of interlinking.
This step helped Google to get rid of over optimised SEO keywords, which were irrelevant and repeated many times, to bring the web page to the top ranking of the search results. Elaborating further, if there were repeated or irrelevant inbound links in the website, containing certain anchor text, then the search engine would turn suspicious of its nature in regards to its intent to link to the other website naturally.
What are the appropriate ways to optimise anchor text?
One of the major activities to achieve better results through the search engines is by introducing natural anchor text phrases rather than the repetition of keywords in a webpage.
This gives an idea to the search engine that you are genuine and are not behind over optimisation of the keywords, desperate to get ahead in the race of ranking. Similarly over usage of keywords in the form of internal links may hurt the ranking in a big way.
Internal linking is certainly one of the best practises but it has to be done carefully with the anchor text in such a way that it seems natural and genuine to the search engine. If the anchor text is used as multiple links to a page, obviously, there is a high chance that Google might identify it as a spamming behaviour. Interestingly if a site has relevant and informative content, there is a high chance that other websites may link themselves to it and hence, it may be ranked well in the top search engine results even without using the text itself.
Understanding various types of anchor text and how to use them?
Exact-match
Anchor text ‘exact match’ means referring to a link to a page that exactly matches the keywords. It refers to linking keywords to an exactly similar page. For instance, ‘best restaurants’ keywords links to a page about the best restaurants.
Partial-match
Anchor text ‘partial match‘ refers to a linking activity based on a partial match to a page. For instance, ‘Best strategic ideas‘ links to a webpage about best strategies.
Brand name
An anchor text can be in the form of a brand name. For example, ‘brand-name‘ can link to an article on the branded website.
Naked link
An anchor text in the form of a URL such as ‘www.getposttop.com’ is called a naked link anchor.
Generic
An anchor text which is used in the form of “ click here“ is a common generic anchor used as words or a phrase.
Images
An anchor text can be the text within the image’s alt attribute so that Google can use the anchor text contained in the image.
What are the best practices for optimising SEO anchor text?
It is always recommended that SEO anchor text is friendly towards the search engine so that it can crawl and offer the top ranking to it. For the same:
- Try to be as concise as possible.
- Done repeat anchor text very often
- Use anchor text relevant to the page-to-be linked
- Don’t use generic words
- The best practice will be to use and context within your website so that you can widen your network.
Describe your link to a page in a specific way as much as possible and be concise in such a way that it encourages users to click on the link.
Conclusion:
Search engines like Google have come of age and have evolved into a complex search engine that identifies an original from a fake website. It was the introduction of Penguin algorithms that helped it to evolve and rendered the capability to identify junk content from the natural and original content.
Thus, introducing any kind of junk keywords as anchor text may now help the cause to bring the websites ranking up in the Google search results. SEO Services in also the best method to boost your website ranking. Benchmarks such as keywords In form of an exact match; partial match; brand name; naked link; generic, or image link to a web page have to be relevant and concise to the linked page. Relevancy, genuinity, and precise content along with contextual keywords are the keys for search engine optimisation.
Unless anchor text usage is followed religiously as mentioned above and with the honest intent, which can help users to find relevant content, climbing up the ranking in the Google search engine may not be an easy task.