Anchor Text is a clickable text in a hyperlink from a webpage, and is one of the most important SEO factor you should take care of. Search engines like Google heavily weight its SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) based on the anchor text of links to a page. Which means, if any anchor text is pointing towards a particular page, that page will surely rank up high in search engine results. But the anchor text links that are pointing to that page might be from different sources and might not be a good link always.
Importance of Anchor Text in SEO
We usually inter link our pages from other similar pages with generic anchor text words like Click here, Go here, Visit here, Download here and etc, which must be avoided up to one extent. So instead of using these generic keywords, you can use the brand keywords or targeted keywords for better results. For example:
- Check out how to Boost PageRank Within 3 Months (Correct)
- Click here to read Boost PageRank Within 3 Months (Wrong)
In the above example, Google will rank up Boost PageRank Within 3 Months keyword much faster when compared to the Click here link. Because, Google is ranking up the keyword Click Here and shows up the page which has more links on the keyword Click Here. Look at the below screenshot where Adobe Reader is ranking no 1 for the keyword Click here! Which means, a lot of links from other websites are pointing to get.adobe.com/reader/ with the keyword Click Here.
For example, Mashable is a good source of latest technology news, but people prefer reading Latest Tips which provide quality content to its readers. Here “Mashable” is the anchor text which points to http://www.mashable.com/, where as “Latest Tips” points to http://www.coolpctips.com. Now the links which we mentioned above will tell the search engines that when a user types Mashable, iTechCode.com thinks that http://www.mashable.com is a relevant site for the term “Mashable” and the link http://www.coolpctips.com is relevant to “Latest Tips“. So if multiple sites are linking to http://www.coolpctips.com for the term Latest Tips, that page can manage to rank well even if there is nothing related to that keyword or phrase in the site. That’s what happened with Adobe Reader in the above example.
Now you might be wondering, Hmmmph! may be I should change all my generic keywords to targeted keywords asap! Hold on! That’s not a good idea, and you are just inviting Google Penguin to hit your blog. If your blog has more than 20% of targeted keywords, you can be affected by Google Penguin update. So what could be the ratio to avoid this confusion? This is pretty simple, your site should have 20% targeted keywords like weight loss, 40% brand keywords like your company name, website name, link name, and finally 40% of generic keyword links like Click here, Visit here and etc.
If your blog is brand new, you should balance the generic, targeted and brand anchor text links carefully. Just note down the internal links and anchor texts of your blog in a excel sheet, and check out whether you are balancing the anchor text links in your website or not. And if your blog is pretty old, you can use any free tool to get a standard report on internal and external back-links of your website, One of my favourite tool is Screaming Frog SEO Spider which can provide you 1000 back-links of your website instantly. I hope you understood the importance of anchor text in SEO. Please let us know if there is anything which is bothering you regarding SEO.
Happy Blogging!
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About Satish Kumar
Hi Satish ,
Really Saying After Reading This Post i came to know that Link building,,Keywords ,web site name,,company name ..plays a crucial role in our Blog Posts!! Every blogger need to concentrate on them for Good Page Rank!! Thanks For Sharing !! and How is Your Campus2life.com going bro ..???
~Srikanth sri
Hi Satish,
It is a good post and i liked the anchor text tips here. It has become crucial to improve SEO as per Google algo change to maintain the exposure.
Thanks Manoranjan 🙂 I’m glad your liked it!
Informative post bro, worth reading for a newbie like me. Well I’m confused about the internal link building strategy, using plugins for that or manual linking, which one you prefer?
Never use automated plugins to link your keywords, they are very bad according to SEO standards. 🙂
Good article Satish 🙂
Use of keywords and brand name as an anchor text is important to get the most out of that particular link. I agree with you that anchor text diversification is now more important specially after the penguin update.
True! Thanks Tarun! 🙂
Hi Satish, I’m a bit in confusion. I never used generic words like “click here” or “visit here” while anchoring any link to my site. Because I never knew about the balancing part. Is it going to have a bad effect on my blog?
But, yes, while commenting on other blogs I generally use my name and not keywords!
Hello Mukesh, You should balance your keywords according to the number of links you have in your site. I’ll soon write another amazing post on how to do that 🙂
i think after penguin updates, Anchor Text will be decreased so much 🙂
Yes! Definitely we have to! 🙂
Really a great information this could be also helpful when linking back to your blog .
Thanks Tayyab! 🙂
Hi Satish,
Nice to see you Satish at Amit Shaw’s blog. 🙂
Great Post!
Thanks For Sharing this Seo Tips..it is Helpful For me as Always 😛
Mosam
Thanks Mosam, Its been a pleasure me writing here! 🙂
Hi Satish Kumar,
You wrote very important points on blogging. New bloggers don’t think on Anchor Text. But by showing this detail information, they will learn lot. Thanks for share
Thanks Ahsan. This information is very much required for any newbie blogger or a pro 🙂
Anchor text are crucial indeed.
I always go after long tail keywords so the anchor is long tail which helps me to rank high in the engines for a less competitive search term.
thanks for the share!
Akos
Exactly! This is another amazing topic to write about! Ill surely make one on long tail keywords 🙂
Looking forward to your advice on long tail keywords Satish. This was an excellent post by the way – I’ll be checking out the screaming frog SEO spider this weekend.
that’s a great idea to escape from Google penguin update even if we are using more keywords. Nice post by you Satish! Informative too, thanks for sharing n keep writing!
So that Means Finding CommentLuv enabled Keyword Premium Blogs are best to Imrpove rankings for a particular Keyword! Thanks Sathish. This cleared many Doubts in my Mind
very gud article satish…i also do practice by giving the anchor text to the given link…this is a nice way to improve our ranking for targeted keywords as u said! 🙂
great article Satish,
I seriously found it very informative, because I’ve never heard of the fact that a page should be linked with same anchor text through out the site to get the better page rank..,
thank you for the information..,
Also the example you’ve give at the starting i.e “click here” links to “get.adobe.com/reader/” was fabulous..
🙂