Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that appears in a URL hyperlink and can be used to direct website visitors to another page on a site or to another site altogether. It is underlined and usually in blue, though the color can be changed. Anchor text is an important part of SEO rankings. Links within a website—or external links directing a user to another website—play a fundamental part in search engine performance.

How Anchor Text Works

Anchor text that contains keywords will greatly improve the ranking of a page. A hyperlink that contains the anchor text “Click Here” has very little positive effect, however, a hyperlink that contains the text “2017 Car Brand B 200CI” will greatly enhance a page’s ranking. A meaningless anchor text or one that does not relate to the hyperlink will negatively affect page ranking. This is because some SEO agents will abuse this ranking system to increase their page ranking. An example of this will be anchor text that reads “Best Mobile Phone” on a blog that primarily discusses children’s clothing. Search engines will detect the information as not being relevant and will likely downgrade the ranking of the site to which the hyperlink was directed.

Anchor text needs to be relevant and not contribute to keyword stuffing. Anchor text should be used to guide users to a page that is relevant to the content of the page it appears on and the anchor text should read seamlessly within the overall text of the content and relate to the overall topic of the site.