Let’s start with the possibly most basic question,

What Is Anchor Text?

It is simply the clickable text in a hyperlink. The blue, underlined text that occurs after linking it to a webpage is called the Anchor text. SEO experts say, anchor text must be relevant to the page it is linked to. Keywords present in anchor text has become a crucial factor for rankings on a webpage.

Importance of Anchor Text:

• Most primarily it tells the readers what to expect from the content present on the other side of the link.
• It makes the promise of providing the content they are looking for.
• Makes it easy for Google Algorithm to determine the content present on the link.

Let’s move forward to look up to the different types by which Anchor Text can be written.

Types of Anchor Text:

Exact Match Text

It’s always good to be true. In this, the anchor text is the exact words reflecting the content. For example, “Google Analytics” linking to a page about google analytics.

Partial Match Text

It’s simply a variation of the true keyword of the content. For example, “Google Analytics Strategies” linking to a page about google analytics.

Brand Text

A direct brand name is used as an anchor text. For example, “iamurteacher” links to our website.

Naked Link Text

An URL is used as an anchor text. For example, “www.iamurteacher.com” linking to the same URL.

Generic Text

A generic word is used as an anchor text. For example, “Click here” and ” Read this” is the generic anchor texts, they do not tell anything about the page.

Images Alt Text

It’s simply the alt attribute used for the present image which works as an anchor text for the image.

The Effect Of Anchor Text On SEO?

Google always watches over the anchor text of a webpage for a better understanding of the content on that page and uses the information to help it rank better on the appropriate keyword.

Google also claimed in its released paper that anchor texts can provide a better appropriate description of the webpage than the metadata of the webpage itself.

Anchor text also helps Google Algorithm to crawl things better that don’t or can’t provide a copy for indexing, including:

• Images
• Documents
• Apps
• Databases
• Programs

Anchor text plays a very large role in deciding the search engine rankings.

Anchor Text in Backlinks!

After learning the types and importance of anchor text in SEO, you should know that another important aspect of anchor text is differentiating between Nofollow and Follow links.

Considering the HTML side, a Nofollow link does not generate much of a difference but is a simple addition of an extra piece of code.

For example, a Nofollow link will somewhat look like this,

<a href=”https://www.iamurteacher.com/”rel=”nofollow”Iamurteacher </a>

Now let’s see, how these small optimizations can change the view of that link for the Google algorithm.

Nofollow: A code that tells Google not to count the link as a backlink for both sides of the webpages and to not scan the link while determining the SEO value of either page.

It is very important as it saves either side of pages from creating an unwanted backlink.

Google has started this feature on the 1st of March, 2020 as it helps Google in determining better results for SERPs.

Sponsored: It notifies Google that the link is sponsored as it was generated through an agreement between you and the other side.

UGC ( User Generated Content): Some websites allow their users to put their views, reviews or some information etc. on their site (on a webpage), the UGC code tells Google that the content is on the other side of this link was created (placed) by users.

Follow: It’s just the opposite of Nofollow. It tells Google to count the webpage of the link as a backlink and scan it while determining the SEO of the page.

The discussion of these codes might better fit in the topic of backlinks, but it’s important to consider these codes while learning about the Anchor Text.

Now that it’s clear, Anchor Texts are quite much useful for your website’s better SEO. Let’s discuss the ways you can improve Anchor Link Texts.

Ways To Improve Anchor Texts

Concise and Comprehensive

With the new algorithm updates, the two things Google want from content is to be concise and comprehensive. Yes, there’s no word limit I’m anchor text but it’s better to keep concise for a good response.

So, while writing the anchor text from next time, the two most important things to keep in mind are:

• You need the most concise and accurate way to describe the content on a webpage.
• You should choose words that will encourage the user to click on your webpage.

Relevancy of Target Page

As search engines are evolving day-by-day, they are becoming far better than the point they started. Now they can even look and analyse the relevancy of the webpage you linked to an anchor text in your content. Now it’s very important to keep the target link of the webpage related to its anchor text.

Search engines take this information and form a large chart to determine your website’s SEO. If they found that anchor text was not at all related to the webpage it’s attached to, it can decrease your website’s SEO resulting in decreasing your ranking on SERP.

Keyword In Anchor Text

Putting the focus keyword in anchor text is good, but the problem starts when the anchor text starts repeating in too many web pages. Even if it’s unintentionally Google take that as suspicious or Spam behavior which can affect your website’s SEO too. Keep in mind, that writing the exact keyword is good but giving it a slight variation is much better.

In The End

Anchor text is no doubt a crucial factor for a website’s better SEO score. Anchor text makes it easy for readers to determine the content inside the link and not to forget it is one of the Google ranking factors. It’s not much of a hard thing to write a good anchor text but you just need to consider several things while writing it.

I hope you have got all the answers you were looking for and if not, the comment box is wide open, we promise we will respond to your question as fast as possible.