What Is Anchor Text And Give Me Some Reasons Why They Are Important
Anchor text usually gives the user related descriptive or contextual information about the content of the link’s destination. The anchor text is not necessarily related to the actual text of the URL of the link. Anchor text usually gives those who are interested with useful information pertaining to the subject matter of the page you’re linking to.
Here’s why anchor text is so important… The search engines use it to determine your page’s subject matter. Implemented well, it boosts your website’s position in search engines, especially in Google. If you use “click here” as the text people are going to click on, you’re telling potential visitors your content discusses the subject “click here”. If you use “Part 2″ as the anchor text, the search engines will categorize the page is discussing “part 2″. You wouldn’t want to rank highly for “click here” or “Part 2″.
Anchor text backlinks matter so greatly that it’s possible to rank in the top 10 in Google’s search results for a phrase which isn’t mentioned anywhere on the page. Some blog publishers have fun using “Google bombing” to get pages appearing highly for humorous phrases. If the phrase is obscure, just a small number of anchor text backlinks will win the phrase a No.1 ranking. If it’s highly sought after, hundreds or thousands of links might be needed.
When inquiring about others linking to your site, it’s a good idea to provide them with the HTML code ready to cut and paste into their page. That way, you are going to select the anchor text. However, if your site is all about cool dogs, you will want to avoid “cool dogs” being used as the phrase in every link to your site. That kind of Over-optimization would create an unnatural pattern.
You can use anchor text in:
• External links – links that point from other websites
• Internal links – links from within your site
• Navigation maps – Links on your primary page
Those listed above are all key locations and will benefit your site in. Remember that real live humans will read your links as well as search engines, so the words in your anchor text must seem sensible. Ultimately, the final objective is more visitors and once they come to your site, you want to be “visitor friendly”, because if it is not, they will look for that elsewhere. If you always provide users with useful information, even when you are trying to get rankings with search engines, you will not regret it.
