Understanding Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text (also known as a hyperlink in HTML mark up) we see within the content of a website and once you click on it, you will be directed to another page. Most commonly, you will see blue, underlined text. Anchor texts are one of the many signals search engines use to determine the topic of a web page, and can direct to an internal or external web page.

Anchor text for targeted SEO purpurses should contain keywords that are relevant and related to the targeted search terms. This practice should be used with a variety of keywords, branded keywords and variety of anchor text types to make it appear natural to the search engine. Not using this practice could potentially spam the search engines, effecting your search rankings for that keyword.

An example of a anchor text would be custom web design.

There are several types of anchor text - here are the most common:

Zero Anchor Text: There is no significant link value and it is highly recommended to avoid phrases such as “click here”.

“Naked” URLs: This would occur when you have links without anchor text.

Exact Match Anchor Text: This type of anchor text contains a geographical area and a keyword (e.g. Tacoma web design). If you use exact match anchor text heavily in your content, it may be perceived as unnatural link building and you want to avoid that.

Partial Match Anchor Text: Instead of using an exact match as mentioned above, you can just use the key phrase such as web design. From the surrounding text, search engines will understand that we are talking about a web design company in Tacoma. This type of anchor text is recommended. 

Hybrid Anchor Text: If you want to use a combination of anchor text styles, you are welcome to do that as well as long as it relates your brand with your non-branded terms.  This is also another recommended way for using anchor text. 

Anchor text is important and a valuable search engine optimization tool because the word or phrase used in anchor texts can pertain directly to the landing page content, or be one of the major keywords that the web page is trying to rank for.