Thirdi SEO Tips: How To Use Anchor Text
By Keith | June 24th, 2009Today we’ll be looking at a very basic, but very important, search engine ranking factor that sometimes gets overlooked: linking and anchor text. Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. Often, it appears highlighted or underlined and usually stands out from regular content in some useable fashion. For example:
In the HTML code, this link is written out like so:
<a href=”http://www.thirdi.com”>Software Company</a>
Anchor text is used as a signifier to a user to show where they will be taken to if they click on the link. It also acts as a signifier to search engines the topic of the page it is pointing to, and thusly which keywords it should rank for. When linking internally or when building a website’s navigation, it is important that the anchor text you use is indicative of the page it is pointing to.
Some Dos and Don’ts
DO use anchor text that is descriptive of the page it is pointing to:
Search Engine Marketing
<a href=”http://www.thirdi.com/what-we-do/search-engine-marketing”>Search Engine Marketing</a>
DO use targeted keywords in your anchor text:
Software Development & eCommerce
<a href=”http://www.thirdi.com/what-we-do”> Software Development & eCommerce </a>
DON’T dilute your keywords by using too many words in your anchor text:
Thirdi.com is a software development, eCommerce solutions and Internet Marketing company!
<a href=”http://www.thirdi.com”> Thirdi.com is a software development, eCommerce solutions and Internet Marketing company!</a>
DON’T have more outbound links than you have content to support it!
DON’T use “click here” as anchor text!
Related posts:
- Thirdi SEO Tips: Images and Image Optimization
- Thirdi SEO Tips: Mobile SEO – Tips For Optimizing Your Mobile Site
- Thirdi SEO Tips & Techniques – Get A Site Indexed With Webmaster Tools
