Anchor text matters

You might be more familiar with anchor texts than you realize, even if you don’t know them by name. I’m sure you’ve encountered HTML hyperlinks—commonly referred to simply as links—on nearly every web page you visit. These links usually appear underlined and, often, in a different color. Most importantly, they allow users to navigate seamlessly from page to page. For this seamless navigation to work, each hyperlink must specify its destination or URL. Now, imagine an internet where every link was presented in its full URL form:

You can read more on this topic in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text Wikipedia article.

Fortunately, the reality is much more user-friendly. The previous example is more readable and visually appealing like this:

You can read more on this topic in the Anchor text Wikipedia article.

This transformation is made possible by the HTML <a> element:

You can read more on this topic in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text">Anchor text</a> Wikipedia article. 

As you may have surmised by now, the visible, clickable text in a link is known as the anchor text ¹. The beauty—and potential pitfall—of anchor text lies in its flexibility; it can be anything and doesn’t have to match the title of the destination page, as seen in the example above. Essentially, anchor texts are small yet powerful tools that make web browsing smoother and more intuitive—when done correctly!

Anchor texts are essential for User Experience and SEO

Anchor texts act as signposts on the vast digital landscape, directing your readers to their next destination. They play a crucial role in enhancing user experience by making website navigation more intuitive and accessible. Ideally, anchor texts should provide a clear hint about what users can expect when they click on a link. As mentioned earlier, the anchor text may or may not be directly related to the actual title of the linked page or its URL—a blessing, especially when dealing with URLs that might be cryptic and user-unfriendly ². The key point is that anchor texts should always be relevant to the content of the landing page. By offering descriptive information about the link’s destination, anchor texts significantly improve both navigation and user engagement.

Effective anchor text tells users what to expect if they click the link. And helps search engines understand what the linked-to page is about.Padrig Jones

Well-crafted anchor text serves a dual purpose: it benefits both human users and search engines. Search engines use anchor text to gauge the context and relevance of the linked page. This information not only helps search engines understand the page’s content but also aids in ranking pages more accurately in search results. Anchor text is considered a ranking factor as it helps search engines associate URLs with particular keywords or key phrases. Since Google strives to provide the most relevant results to users, using precise and descriptive anchor text can enhance both user navigation and SEO performance.

Google confirms that anchor text is used in search rankings as a way to gain a deeper understanding of pages, which may help with getting those pages surfaced for relevant queries.Matt G. Southern

In summary, anchor text is a vital component of both external and internal linking strategies. It provides essential context and value to both users and search engines, thereby improving user experience and boosting search engine rankings.

Anchor text is relevant for both your internal links and your external links.

Anchor text best practices

The wording and placement ⁴ of anchor text can significantly influence human behavior and are pivotal elements in your overall SEO strategy. By understanding the various types of anchor text, adhering to best practices, and avoiding common pitfalls, you can optimize your anchor text to enhance your readers’ journey, improve your online presence, and drive more traffic to your website.

The Good

Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to. It provides context for the link, and sets the expectation for your readers. The better your anchor text, the easier it is for people to navigate your site and for Google to understand what the page you’re linking to is about.Google

This statement encapsulates the essence of effective anchor text: relevant, descriptive, and concise. Let’s delve deeper into each of these qualities.

Relevant to both the page the link is on and the one it links to

A key practice in crafting anchor text is aligning the link text with the content of the destination page. Nick Schäferhoff from Torque Magazine advises that anchor text should be relevant to both the linking page and the linked page. This ensures that the anchor text fits seamlessly into your content, maintaining readability, avoiding spammy impressions, and positively impacting SEO efforts.

How you would react to clicking on a piece of anchor text that took you to a page that had nothing to do with the link?

Consider the anchor text “WordPress SEO tips” on a page about blogging strategies. Clicking this link should lead to a page with detailed SEO tips specifically for WordPress. If the link instead takes users to a page about general web development tools, the anchor text would be misleading and irrelevant, causing confusion and potentially eroding trust.

If your anchor text is not relevant to the page you’re linking to, or seems shoe-horned into your sentence in an awkward way, readers will learn not to trust your links and begin to associate anchor text with spam. It’s better to avoid a link than to be annoying about it.Kali Bizzul

Relevance hinges on the topic of the linked page but extends beyond content to include intent. If the anchor text mentions a “how-to guide,” readers expect a step-by-step tutorial on the destination page. A mismatch, like directing them to a “pros and cons” article, can lead to feelings of being misled.

Even search engines can discern relevance based on the correlation between the URL and the anchor text.

Descriptive

Anchor text should clearly describe the linked content. It should inform readers and search engines alike about the topic of the destination page. People should be able to infer what they will find by simply looking at the anchor text. It should provide a preview of where the link leads, what they will experience, or how it relates to the current content. Always keep the reader in mind and consider what information they need to decide if a link is worth clicking.

Imagine you’re writing a blog post about time management techniques. Consider these two versions of anchor text:

Bad Example: 
Learn more about effective time management on our <a href="https://blog.cogitactive.com/news/time-management-techniques/">website</a>.

Better Example: 
Learn more about <a href="https://blog.cogitactive.com/news/time-management-techniques/">effective time management</a> on our website.

In the better example, the anchor text is more descriptive and informative, clearly indicating what readers can expect when they click the link.

Pro tip: Try reading the anchor text out of context to check if it’s specific enough to make sense by itself. If you can’t guess the page’s topic, you need more descriptive anchor text.

Anchor text should be accessible to all readers, regardless of their context or preferred tools.

Partial match anchor text might be your best ally in this task. Regarding exact matches, Matt G. Southern from Search Engine Journal explains, Sites that attempt to game their search rankings with exact match anchor text are more likely to have their efforts ignored than rewarded. Similarly, Bernard Huang from Clearscope mentions that using anchor text that exactly matches the target keyword in the destination article can lead to a penalty in the case of external links. While this advice is valuable, more sources to back up these claims would be helpful.

Succinct

Anchor text should succinctly describe the linked page and entice users to click the link. However, it should be kept to a few words if possible and avoid lengthy, unnatural sentences. Striking this balance is challenging but essential.

What is the most concise, accurate way to describe the linked-to page?

Short, clear anchor text helps users quickly identify the link’s destination. This also aids accessibility, as screen readers need to interpret the entire link text. While there isn’t a strict length limit for anchor text, most experts recommend keeping it to five words or less.

So, what’s the right number of words to use in your anchor text? A good goal is to shoot for between two and five words. This allows you to find a good balance between brevity and sufficient detail.Nick Schäferhoff

The Bad

There are several common anchor text mistakes that can negatively impact user experience and a website’s search engine rankings. Here are some of the most common pitfalls to avoid:

• Don’t say “link” in the link text: It’s just noise ⁵. Even screen readers inform users that there’s a link.
• Don’t repeat the URL as part of the link text: URLs can look unattractive and sound even worse when read aloud by a screen reader.
• Don’t use generic phrases: Using anchor text like “click here” or “read more” provides no information about the linked content.
• Don’t force keywords: Anchor text should fit naturally within the content; not disrupt the flow and readability.
• Don’t use empty anchor text: This is wrong, even if Google can use the title attribute as anchor text if the <a> element is empty.

A generic “click here” may be okay from time to time, but chances are good that a little more effort at being descriptive will inspire more clicks from visitors.Miriam Ellis

Improving anchor text involves not only following best practices but also avoiding common pitfalls.

The Ugly

Optimizing anchor text has a history of being over-optimized and gamed, so it’s crucial to know what to avoid. I’ve already touched upon some bad practices, but let’s reiterate the most critical ones.

Some people try to game this system, but don’t fall into this trap. These days, Google is pretty good at spotting links that are unnatural and even harmful.Edwin Toonen

Resist the urge to cram every possible keyword into your anchor text. This practice, known as keyword stuffing, can be perceived as spammy and degrade the user experience. Moreover, it can lead to penalization by search engines.

Using anchor text like “time management tips, effective time management, best time management practices” repeatedly within the same content is an example of keyword stuffing. This can make the content look forced and unnatural.

The safest way to play? Pay attention to effective internal linking practices and choose descriptive anchor text cautiously and intentionally—and only link to related posts that are actually helpful for humans who want to learn more about the topic.Bernard Huang

Avoid trying to trick your readers with misleading links. This goes beyond bad practice—it’s downright deceptive. Anchor text should accurately describe what users will find on the other side of the link, ensuring no unwelcome surprises and no intent to manipulate. Misleading anchor text erodes trust and negatively impacts both user experience and SEO.

Avoid vague, or even worse, clickbait anchor text.

The title attribute

As mentioned earlier, Google uses the title attributes in links without anchor text to understand what to rank a page for. In HTML, the title attribute specifies extra information about an element (not limited to the <a> element). This information is most often shown as tooltip text when the mouse moves over the element, making it visible to both users (via the tooltip) and search engine spiders (via the code itself).

<a href="URL" title="text">anchor text</a>

Originally, this was intended to be used to indicate the title of the linked document. This is still a good practice, but you may use it for any text which you think will be helpful to the user.Adam Wood

“What a brilliant idea!”
“There is actually a dedicated page—“H33: Supplementing link text with the title attribute”—on the W3C website.”

They indeed detail how to use the title attribute on an <a> element to provide additional text describing a link. For example, this can be used to provide additional information to help clarify or further describe the purpose of a link. They warned, however, that: If the supplementary information provided through the title attribute is something the user should know before following the link, such as a warning, then it should be provided in the link text rather than in the title attribute.

I will definitely implement this good practice to give my readers a better idea of what they will find on the other end of the given link, be it internal or external.

Bonus tip

Google is getting better and better at figuring out what a text is about and how to fit it in the grand scheme of things. Google can read texts, so understanding of the context, synonyms, related words and concepts becomes critical.Marieke van de Rakt

What does this mean? It means that Google can determine whether links are useful to a reader based on the context of the text in which the links are embedded. Remember when we discussed that anchor text should be relevant to both the page it’s on and the one it links to? Here we are! Anchor text should make sense in relation to the surrounding content. Why? Because both the anchor text and the paragraph around the internal link inform search engines about the content on the target page. As Marieke van de Rakt noted, the sentence in which we use a link is crucial for Google to establish whether or not a particular page should rank well in the search results pages.

So, in addition to providing enough space between individual links on your pages, remember to give context to your links: the words before and after links matter, so pay attention to the sentence as a whole.

Use anchor text that flows naturally within the surrounding content.

Conclusion

Properly using anchor text helps users and search engines navigate your site more efficiently and understand the relevance of different pages.Padrig Jones

Anchor text should be natural, relevant, and descriptive, providing value to both users and search engines. By carefully selecting and optimizing (without over-optimizing) anchor text, you can enhance the visibility and usability of your content while providing search engines with clear signals about your content’s relevance and authority. This isn’t just about SEO—it’s about creating a seamless and engaging journey for your readers, one link at a time.

As I continue my Blog posts housekeeping journey, I plan to implement these anchor text best practices across all my old (and future) articles. This will involve reviewing and updating existing links to ensure they are relevant, descriptive, and concise. Specifically, I will address some common mistakes (the ‘bad’ ones; happily, I didn’t commit any ‘ugly’ ones) I made in the past:

• In line with my errors in internal linking, I often used just a keyword instead of a descriptive anchor text. I was also guilty of using generic anchors like “link”, “video”, or “website” for my links. Moving forward, I will use more descriptive and informative anchor texts to give readers a clear idea of what to expect.
• Now that I recognize the importance of the context in which the anchor text is placed, I will pay close attention to the sentences and paragraphs around my links and ensure that all anchor texts are contextually relevant.
• I didn’t use the title attribute yet. I will start incorporating it in my links to enhance the user experience and provide more details.

By making these changes, I aim to create a more user-friendly experience, enhance the readability and credibility of my blog, and help build trust with my readers.

Coming Next: Turning headings into link targets

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¹ According to the Anchor Text Wikipedia article, The term “anchor” was used in older versions of the HTML specification for what is currently referred to as the “a element”, or <a>. The HTML specification does not have a specific term for anchor text, but refers to it as “text that the a element wraps around”. ^
² Some URLs can contain long strings of random characters, making them difficult for humans to read—hence the term “ugly URLs.” Webmasters of these sites have clearly not read my article on Pretty Permalinks. ^
³ Before Google’s Penguin update, which targeted dodgy link-building practices, keyword-rich anchor text links were a surefire way to achieve top search engine rankings. However, now overusing exact-match keyword anchors can trigger penalties from Google. ^
⁴ Writing, in general, should have a natural flow. The same principle applies to link texts. When adding links, make sure they fit seamlessly with the rest of the text. ^
⁵ Links are underlined (this convention generally shouldn’t be broken, as users are used to it) and generally styled in a different color. ^