WHAT IS ANCHOR TEXT?
Anchor Text is the text or rather clickable text that is used to link to a particular page on the Internet. (It can be a single letter, a single word, a group of words, a number or even a symbol.) This post is for the newbies who do not have a clear idea about an Anchor Text. I have made an attempt to explain it in as clear way as possible – what is the meaning of Anchor text?, why to use an Anchor Text? and how to choose an Anchor Text?
Examples of Anchor Text – Make Money Online, M, %, Choose The Right Blogging platform, Craigslist . All these Anchor Texts leads to different pages on my blog, you can click one to see.
Here are a few things that will help you in finding an Anchor text in a web page :-
• An Anchor Text changes the normal cursor sign of an “arrow” to a “hand” sign prompting you to click when the cursor arrow is taken over it.
• An Anchor Text opens a new page either in the same window or in a different window when clicked.
• An Anchor Text shows the page URL to which it is linking in the Task Bar when the cursor is taken over it.
• An Anchor Text is generally of a different colour then the surrounding text.
• An Anchor Text changes its colour when you take the cursor above it – this is also called the “mouseover effect”.
• An Anchor Text sometimes is also underlined besides having a different colour.
• An Anchor Text may also be of the same colour as the surrounding text but may change colour or get underlined or show both effects when the cursor is taken over it.
A HTML code is used to turn an Anchor Text into a link. An example of Anchor Text with the HTMl code is given below :-
The text in red is the Anchor Text and the rest is the code which is pointing to my home page. This is the basic code but there can be other attributes added inside the code like rel=”nofollow”(used to stop search engines from following the link) or target=”_blank” (used to open the link in a new window) depending on the purpose.
Why To USE Anchor Text?
You can ask the obvious question that – Why to use Anchor Text? – so here are the purposes an anchor text serves :-
• An Anchor Text appears much more suited to the surrounding text then the URL which looks rather odd.
• An Anchor Text also has a better ability to expresses the subject of the page to which it is linking to in a short and comprehensive manner if used properly.
• The most important purpose that an Anchor Text Serves is that it tells the Search Engines what the page is all about to which it is linking and this has great SEO value – that is this helps greatly in improving positions in SERPs(Search Engine Result Pages). It helps in off page optimization of the page for a particular keyword phrase for which you are trying to rank well in SERPs.
How To Choose The Anchor Text?
As already stated that the major purpose of an Anchor Text is that it tells the Search Engines in its own language what is the topic of the page to which it is linking thus it has great SEO value so proper care is to taken in choosing the Anchor Text of a link.
In fact it is one great thing in off page optimization techniques that is to be taken care of while linking your pages may it be with internal or external links.
Choose the keyword phrase for which you want to optimize or rank well in SERPs as your Anchor Text. Say for example – you want to optimize a particular post for the keyword phrase “blogging tips” then choose “blogging tips” (and its variations) as your Anchor Text for the links pointing to that page – simple!
You have seen in the above paragraph I have asked also to use variations of the Anchor Text – you may ask why? Let me explain:- Links to a page can come in basically two ways – the first is through organic ways that is when somebody likes your blog or a particular post in your blog he puts a link in his blog pointing to your blog or to that post using an Anchor Text of his choice so these links contain a variation of Anchor Text which can not be manipulated and are considered as natural – and the second way to get links is by adopting various means (topic of discussion of a different post coming soon) like leaving blog comments, leaving forum comments and etc whose Anchor Text can be manipulated to contain the keywords of our choice. Now if you make too many links with the same Anchor Text then Google and also many other search engines can detect and considers links with the same Anchor Text from multiple sources as spam and being made by humans to manipulate search engine results artificially so penalises those sites. So making links with the Anchor Text as variations of the keywords you want to optimize your blog for will just make the links look natural to search engines and you will escape the penalty.
Now how to choose variations of the same Anchor Text? This is rather easy. Let me give you an example by giving you some variations of the Anchor Text “blogging tips”. The variations can be like :-
• Blogging tips
• Killer blogging tips
• Tips to make money blogging
• Easy blogging tips
• Online Blogging Tips
• Money making blogging tips
• Useful blog tips
• Tips to start a blog
There can be thousands of variations possible limited only by your imagination. Just choose a few and start using them as Anchor Text to get back links to your blog or site.
If you have difficulty in making v
ariations you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool which is a free service. Just type in the keyword phrase in the box, fill in the captcha and press “Get keyword ideas” tab to obtain many variations. Choose those containing your keywords.
I hope you’ll have got a fair idea of – what is an Anchor Text?, why to use an Anchor Text? and how to choose an Anchor Text?. But if you’ll have any questions to ask or suggestions to make please do so in the comment section. Any response from your side is highly appreciated and will just give me inspiration to write more and better articles for you’ll.
