An anchor text plays a critical role in link building. Every SEO professional knows how vital the link-building anchor strategy is. It’s also the most effective way to rank a website, but it can be tricky.
In the early 1990s, when SEO started, black-hat SEO experts did anything and everything to rank on Google. Since Google has implemented over 200 metrics, including anchor text analysis, it has become more complex, considering more factors when establishing links.
Thus, this blog provides a guide to anchor texts for link building. But first, let’s explore anchor text to understand what it is.
What Is Anchor Text?
Anchor text refers to the visible characters and words displayed in a link to another website or document. The link appears as blue underlined text, but you can customize it with HTML or CSS. It provides search engines and users with relevant contextual information about the link’s destination.
Here’s a link code example:
<a href=”http://www.example.com”>Small dancing ponyt</a>
The anchor text in the above link code example is ‘Small dancing pony.’Search engines use external anchor text (text used by other sites to link to your site) to determine how other users perceive your site — and by extension, the website’s content.
Generally, website owners have no control over how other sites link to theirs, but they can ensure that anchor text on their site is helpful, descriptive, and relevant. Even if a page doesn’t contain the terms, it can still rank well if many sites perceive it as suitable for a set of words.
Why Is Anchor Text Important for SEO?
As mentioned, search engines use anchor text to determine your website’s content, which is crucial for SEO. With this strategy, your site pages will appear higher in SERPs because of the optimized keywords.
And you will provide more clarity to potential visitors. In the end, it all boils down to high-quality links. The higher the quality of the anchor, the better the ranking from authoritative sites, resulting in higher conversion and click-through rates.
Using anchor text for link building can have a variety of benefits, but the two most significant benefits are:
- Increased link juice: Anchor text helps Google determine the relevance of a link. It’s okay to over-optimize keyword strings as long as the keyword string is natural. If the anchor text is correct, it can increase the link juice flowing to the destination page. Some would argue that it’s the single most crucial factor for backlinks besides domain authority.
- Improved clickability: SEO isn’t all about technical aspects. Anchor text also has a practical part, which the Getmentioned agency can help enhance. Its appeal to human users makes a link more clickable. As a result, traffic and engagement increase.
Types of Anchor Text
Several types of anchor text exist, including:
- Exact-match: An anchor text is an exact match if its keyphrase is the same as the page it links to. (for example, if your anchor text is anchor strategy and links to a page about anchor strategy.)
- Partial-match: A partial-match anchor text incorporates a keyword variation on the linked page. For example, if you link to a page about SEM using the anchor text’s best search engine marketing tactics.
- Generic: Anchoring words or phrases. In most cases, a call to action accompanies it. For example, “Call Us Now.”
- Naked Link: An anchor URL is a directly posted URL. For example, https://www.example.com/
- Branded: An anchor text that uses the website’s or brand’s name. An anchor text that links to the brand’s website, such as the Getmentioned agency, is an example of an anchor text.
- Images: When you use a linked image in your content, Google will use the anchor text in its meta tag.
How to Optimize Your Anchor Strategy for Link Building
Listed below are a few tips and tactics that can help optimize your anchor strategy:
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
You will rarely be ranked higher based solely on the number of links you receive. Whether asking for a link or writing a guest post, you must do your homework on your prospects’ link profiles. It is always better to have one good, great link than one hundred bad links. Avoid suspicious pages and try to get links from sites with high domain authority.
Monitor and Test Your Anchor Texts
Monitoring your anchor texts can lead to dramatic results, but it takes a lot of work. You can use anchor text tracking to determine your site’s direction, especially if you’re constantly building backlinks. An excel sheet of your links or a monitoring tool will allow you to determine if your strategy needs to be adjusted.
Place Anchor Texts in Visible Places
When placing anchor text, you should put it near the keyword or phrase it references. Using an appropriate link variation will increase your readers’ chances of finding what they’re looking for in this page area.
Diversify Anchor Text Types
Use your anchor texts creatively. Consider using different anchor texts and placing your links strategically when creating your content. Mixing things up can make things look more natural or organic in situations like these. Chances are, Google will consider your content spam if you always use branded anchors or exact match anchors. Do some research on your competitors’ anchor text distribution since there is no golden formula for linking.
Conclusion
It’s more important than ever to write good anchor text. As a result, it is equally important to maintain a clear anchor strategy to satisfy Google’s algorithm. Therefore, it is necessary to use various anchor text types and focus on a user-friendly experience.
Interesting Relate Article: “Guide To Rank Your Content through Link Building And Backlinks 2022“
