Using Anchor Text to Boost SEO Rankings

Anchor text, for those who do not know, is the part of clickable text of a link. This is a message for users and search engines, telling them what they should find if they actually click the link. But too often, the anchor text you get is 'click here '. This is not only unnecessary to users, but it is a total loss of a link that could help boost your SEO ranking for a keyword. Type of account as a vote, saying Google you are voting for this website is displayed for that specific term. Let's look at a few points of anchor text which makes it a powerful tool for SEO:

1. Choosing Your Anchor Text
If you are inserting the anchor text directly on your website, you will need to use the appropriate hyperlink reference tag. Here is an example of how to create your link:

<a href=”www.mydomain.com”>Anchor Text Here</a>

The anchor text portion will be the only part users can see, and will become the blue hyperlink. Some content management systems have a link button you can click to create links, rather than needing to write out the tags.
If you are posting on someone else’s website, you may not be able to choose your anchor text, so you can either try inserting the HTML, or asking them if they will activate certain anchor text for you.

2. Anchor Text Should be a Description of What You Will Find if You Click
The purpose of anchor text is mainly to tell a user what will be found if they click the link. So what are you telling the user, and thereby the search engines they will find if you use the anchor text “click here”? Nothing at all. Google uses anchor text as one factor in their algorithms of deciding what terms you should rank for. If you use “click here” as anchor text, you are telling Google your website should rank for the term “click here”, which I am guessing is not what your website is about. Try using targeted anchor text, such as a product name, or a keyword.

3. Is Anchor Text Really That Important?
Yes. Anchor text can have a powerful effect on where your website ranks. It is for precisely this reason that some malicious individuals have been able to Google bomb other’s websites. Google bombs show that you can get just about any website to rank for just about any keyword on Google, just by linking to it enough times with the correct anchor text.

The lesson of the day, then, is this: Do not overlook the importance of anchor text! It can make or break your SEO results, and can be one thing that sets you above your competitors.