Anchor Text 101: Everything You Need to Know

The search engine optimization involves plenty of techniques. One of them is using the anchor text. Learn more about it here.

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The world of SEO and website search ranking upgrades may seem too complicated for some. With search engine algorithms constantly refining and changing their policies to better sift through the billions of data published every day, it can be difficult to get ahead. However, one thing hasn’t changed throughout the years when it comes to optimizing your website content, and that is backlink building. These links serve as a gateway for referrals and redirections that allow developers to control the organic traffic across the web. It’s a well-known strategy that many authoritative websites use to convince algorithms to put them on a higher search ranking. One of the best ways they can upgrade those backlinks is by utilizing keywords as their anchor text. So, what is anchor text and how does it work? Let’s find out.

What Is Anchor Text and Why Is It Important?

Increasing website or domain authority is a crucial content marketing strategy for any budding business. Used as a metric by search engine algorithms, it evaluates the “strength” and credibility of your published posts.

Companies like Google measure this online influence by tracking the number of commanding domains linked to your site. Both authority and the total tally of backlinks are then plotted and coded to calculate your raw domain rating, on a scale that ranges from 0 to 100.

A good rating usually fluctuates between 50 and 70. So, how do you increase your domain rating? A good SEO technique is incorporating keywords related to your topic into your built links. These words will then serve as your anchor texts, which will be assessed by search engine algorithms to know how likely it is to relate to user queries.

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker

Uses of Anchor Text

The placement of anchor texts is not limited to your website blogs and articles. It can also be incorporated into other website components that affect how search engine algorithms evaluate your site. You can use it in the following:

  • Backlinks

Anchor texts as backlinks however are not limited to connecting websites as they may also redirect visitors to files, documents, and more. However, you need to be careful to not overdo your keyword usage. Cramming redundant words could be classified as spammy content, and will lead to strictly imposed site penalizations and temporary bans. You also need to be more precise with your keyword selection to make it more legitimate. For example, you can’t simply use “dental implants Ottawa” as an anchor text. You can tweak it as “Top dental implants in Ottawa” to make it easier for readers to understand. Backlinks can also be formatted in different ways to better communicate your intentions as a developer to the algorithms. These are the extra code suffixes that tell search engines like Google on how it should treat your created backlink and anchor text utilization:

  1. Sponsored – Informs search engines that your created backlink was achieved through communication and agreements with the publisher.
  2. NoFollow-Tells algorithms to disregard the backlink when evaluating your website’s SEO and respective linked domain.
  3. User-Generated Content – Informs Google that it was through the prerogative of users and visitors that created the particular backlink and its entire content.
  4. Follow -Tells algorithms to fully credit your backlink and use it as a factor in evaluating your site’s authority.
  • HTML

The most commonly used coding language for website developers, HTML, is an integral part of SEO. It contains the basic information and content about your site, which web browsers use to determine how related it is to the query.

However, most developers often forget to optimize it, leaving it as a bunch of random characters that make it difficult for both algorithms and netizens to assess its value. To upgrade it, you can incorporate anchor texts to make them more comprehensive and trustworthy.

Types of Anchor Text

Being creative in how you use keywords as anchor texts is important in search engine optimization. There can be such a limited list of keywords and simply rearranging them is not enough to fool algorithms. Faulty anchor texts can be flagged down and penalized if they seem too spammy. So, for you to avoid that here are different ways to format your anchor texts:

  1. Branded

Using a prominent brand name as an anchor text is a good way to catch the attention of your readers and search engine algorithms. It invokes a sense of credibility, and due to its uniqueness has a lesser chance of getting flagged down as spam content. However, make sure to highlight the brand and the product and avoid cramming in other random keywords.

  1. Partial Match

This type of anchor text is a blend between your target keyword phrase and other supporting buzzwords that directs the attention of your reader toward it. Simply placing an anchor text front and center may seem too off-topic or irrelevant for some readers, so make sure to include additional action words that tell them what it’s about.

  1. Related

More subtle, more informative, and less spammy, this type of anchor text incorporates other related topics and words into your backlink. The strategy here is to include other related keywords to make your content more diverse and open to organic traffic. You may be simply writing about dental health, but you can use an anchor text like “dental implants in Brampton“ to expand your range. For SEO services in Montreal, you can use the “Montreal SEO company“ as an anchor text too.

  1. Random

Subjective and generic, these types of anchor texts are usually call-to-action phrases that don’t specify where it’s going. Its meaning heavily relies on the context of the words being used. It’s usually composed of phrases like “click here for more” and “read here”. However, these words are still very popular keywords that can easily trick algorithms.

  1. Naked

Considered as the most basic anchor text, it’s a simple copy-pasted URL link slapped right in your article. It’s clickable and functional and has lesser chances of being penalized as spam content. However, they’re not that enticing to look at to readers as it doesn’t clearly say what it’s about. So, for it to work, it has to be preempted by an informative phrase. For example, if you wanted to link to a specific page about CBD honey sticks, you would include a sentence or two detailing the benefits of hemp, cannabidiol, CBD, and raw honey. You’d then include a naked URL link to a page related to CBD honey sticks, such as https://www.cannabiva.com/product/cbd-honey-sticks/

SEO upgrades, which are as simple as anchor texts, can make or break your website’s online performance. Algorithms and netizens alike pay close attention to these little details that can set apart which sites are more credible from others. This upgrade is a simple fix that can work wonders for your organic traffic and domain rating performance. So, try it out, and use proper anchor texts in your upcoming published content.