SEO Lesson: Anchor Text

SEO Lesson: Anchor Text

You also need to have the right anchor text for those links. If you had a site that wanted to rank for a term like “designer sofas” or “Murphy wall beds,” you wanted to other sites to attach your link to those keywords. Sites that had too many links with keyword anchor text were considered over-optimized. Instead, the Penguin update favored sites with more diverse link profiles, including anchor text for generic terms like “click here” and for branded terms. Anchor text can include: Keywords, as mentioned above Keywords with other phrases. Brand name and keyword. A full URL anchor text can include any other link on your site. Instead of the URL, the link would be attached to the name of the page or blog, such as “How Murphy Wall Beds Help You Save Space.” There is no text, and the link is attached to an image. It looks at all the cues available to find out what content is going to benefit the user most. But just keep creating high-quality content and promoting it to the right sites and you’ll start getting the links and the anchor text you need.

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SEO-lesson-anchor-text
Today’s SEO lesson: Anchor text.

Anchor text is a big deal for linking, and linking is a big deal for your SEO. The better the quality of backlinks you have to your site, the more authority you will have and the higher you will rank in search results.

But the quality of the links is only one part of the solution. You also need to have the right anchor text for those links.

Google’s Penguin update changed the way people approached anchor links. In the past, most marketers tried to get links with anchor text with their targeted keywords. If you had a site that wanted to rank for a term like “designer sofas” or “Murphy wall beds,” you wanted to other sites to attach your link to those keywords.

Penguin came along and penalized sites that were doing that too much. Sites that had too many links with keyword anchor text were considered over-optimized. Instead, the Penguin update favored sites with more diverse link profiles, including anchor text for generic terms like “click here” and for branded terms.

As with all things SEO, the situation has evolved and become a little more sophisticated. Here’s what you have to know about anchor text now:

Categories of Anchor Text

Any word or phrase can be used to hyperlink to another site. You might get the link because you ask for it, or you might get the link because someone just loves your content and wants to reference it or use it as a citation in their own writing.

When analyzing the link profiles of the top-ranking sites, you can identify some recurring categories for anchor text. Usually, the anchor text will fall into one of these categories.

Anchor text can include:

  • Keywords, as mentioned above
  • Keywords with other phrases. Instead of “designer sofas,” the anchor text might be “get the best deal on designer sofas.”
  • Partial keyword or phrase. Instead of “Murphy wall beds,”…

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