Anchor Text refers to the characters and words that hyperlinks appear when linking to another document or place on the web. It usually appears as blue underlined text, but you change your website's link colors and styles via your HTML or CSS. External anchor text (the text that other pages use to connect to your site) is used by search engines to represent how others see your website and, therefore, what your pages could be about.

How to Use Anchor Text?

Anchor text can provide both search engines and users with contextual information about the link target's content. Anchor text can be a simple yet effective way to give readers access to additional information they can use to answer questions or help them make decisions. Many authors use Anchor text in a vague and unfriendly way. To help people find the information they need, anchor text should clearly indicate the type of web page or document that will direct users to decide whether the information is related to their search criteria. When people read web pages, they scan paragraphs for headlines and links that hint at the information available and direct them to where they can find what they need. Hyperlinks should stand out so users can easily scan a page to find what they need and then understand where to go. Links must be meaningful to be helpful to users. For example, if a link takes a user to an article about selling a particular product, include that information in anchor text rather than just the company's name. Give users a clear indication of the content the page contains; so they can quickly decide if it makes sense to click the link. Make sure the content you link to is relevant to the anchor text. Search engines focus on user experience, and linking to relevant content is essential to the user. If the anchor text is "how to get better gas mileage," you shouldn't be taking a user to a page promoting a new movie or something else unrelated. Avoid using generic text such as "click" links for SEO. Let users know exactly where the link will take them. For example, if you want users to click on a link to an article about choosing an SEO company, use anchor text like "Guidelines for choosing an SEO company." When writing anchor text, consider what users will find when they click a link. Include appropriate keywords in the links. It may also be helpful for users to include media formats such as PDF in anchor text or in parentheses. Make the link long enough to accurately convey its content, but be as concise as possible. Include relevant keywords at the beginning of the links. Studies have found that people mostly look at the first two words on anchor text. Avoid stuffing with anchor text keywords. The sentence with anchor text will flow naturally. Do not use the same anchor text twice on the same page; many users will assume the links go to the same place. If you are linking to two different web pages, use unique anchor text for each. A user doesn't need to read the entire paragraph to understand that they're going to make a connection. Anchor text should make sense even when taken out of context. Include nouns in the anchor text, not verbs. A verb is more abstract, and users may not know where the links lead. A noun is clearer and easier to understand. Do not include more than one link in a sentence. This can be confusing and overwhelming to users. When creating anchor text, focus on user experience. Be descriptive and specific to make sure it's clear to the user where the link is going. Make the text stand out so links are easily found, and users are encouraged to follow them to learn more. Keyword Performance is a full-service SEO company serving businesses of all sizes across multiple industries. We specialize in content writing and site audits to help companies engage customers. 

Why is Anchor Text Important?

People don't want to waste time surfing the internet and surfing irrelevant websites. For this reason, for individuals who aim to obtain the most accurate information as soon as possible, the shorter the time to access the information, the greater the satisfaction. Based on this understanding, you should use content that provides accurate information and anchor texts that reflect the content so that users do not immediately leave when visiting your website and increase your traffic. In addition, it is very important to correctly determine the anchor texts, which are also taken into account by the search engines that index your page, for the page to have a successful ranking.

Why is Anchor Text Important for SEO?

Being successful in SEO studies and using the right anchor text contributes to your web page getting great results in a short time. When adding anchor text for SEO and success, the following points should be considered. Even if the content you publish on your website is the same, you should change your anchor text by editing it in different ways. Thus, you will not encounter a duplicate content warning while your site is indexed. In anchor text, you should definitely use the keywords of the content. Otherwise, your anchor text will be insufficient and incomplete. When buying backlinks, you should take care to use different anchor text for each backlink. You can also make sure that you use different anchor texts by making the necessary evaluations at various intervals to achieve success in anchor text distribution.

Types of Anchor Texts

Exact Match-The type of link given or received with the target keyword.

Example: You can get information in the field of Digital Marketing.

Partial Match-The link is given by partial matching of the keyword on the linked page.

Sample: When we say to learn "information about SEO analysis" for the "What is SEO" page, the linked part I have given to the text I have written with bolt will be a match.

Branded Match-The link is the use of text with the brand name.

Sample: You can benefit from the free features of Ubersuggest for your SEO work-Naked Link

Type of link given by explicitly typing the link itself.

Sample: You can get information about digital marketing from www.dijitalmarketing.com

Generic Link-Non-specific, generic phrase anchor texts that do not contain the target keyword. Calls-to-action such as "for more information."

Anchor Text and Google Algorithms-Algorithm; It analyzes the link profile and compares it with keyword optimization. If the keyword and all the backlinks are the same as the anchor text, Google will penalize it for detecting it as spam. This is because either the backlinks created were not natural, or the work was done with a single keyword. Penguin algorithm logic in Anchor text and Google algorithms: the optimized web page's counterpart generates a penguin penalty for exact match anchor text and the same keyword. To avoid this penalty, using the right keywords at the right time with anchor text is necessary.

How to figure out the competition's anchor text ratios?

The best way to get results in a short time when determining the SEO strategy is to make the right priorities. One of the most important data you must have to achieve this is keyword competition. Contrary to popular belief, although there is a close relationship between SEO competition and AdWords advertiser competition, we cannot say that there is a clear correlation as it will differ in each market. That's why we need tools that deliver results much more precisely than the competitive value in Google's Keyword Planner. Of course, the SEO industry has already prepared its solutions for this. All we have to do is reach the result with effective English searches. You can also use it for Turkish searches, but since some metrics only serve for English, we will do our first test for the query "common SEO problems."

Test Methodology: We will evaluate three different metrics to give you a quick look at the tools we will cover here:

Quick View Data: A summary metric with which you can get an overview of the competition while analyzing large amounts of keyword data. Required when analyzing large data sets. (Like [Holiday Packages] have 45% competition) Detailed View Data: Detailed data that you will want to examine if you want to achieve ambitious results, especially in short-word groups characterized as short-tail. (All the metrics you'll need to analyze sites listed in related words) Data Portability: Accessing a lot of data through services is possible. However, we need to figure out which metrics we can extract to transfer them to Excel, which is necessary for a good consultant. (how much data you can analyze at the same time, whether you can export as CSV or not)