Anchor text

What a Anchor Text ?

Anchor Text (AT) -The non-URL text that is displayed in a hyperlink. An example, in this hyperlink to Fathom’s website, “Fathom’s website” is the A T . Careful use of anchor text can produce both reader and SEO benefits.

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. SEO best practices dictate that A T  be relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than generic text. The blue, underlined anchor text is the most common as it is the web standard, although it is possible to change the color and underlining through html code. The keywords in anchortext are one of the many signals search engines use to determine the topic of a web page.

The A T  is also known as the link label or link title. The words contained in the A T  help determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines such as Google or Yahoo and Bing. Links without anchortext commonly happen on the web and are called naked URLs, or URL anchortexts. Different browsers will display A T differently, and proper use of anchor text can help the page linked to rank for those keywords in search engines.

Exact Match A T

An exact match A T has the same keywords highlighted as the targeted keyword of a web page.

 A T Variation

When websites aggressively build exact match A T  links, a Google spam filter is triggered. It is unnatural for web pages that link to your website to all have exact match A T. A bit of A T variation is natural, just like how a great portion of the internet’s links are naked URLs.

 A T Manipulation

As a result of being a search engine signal for relevancy, it is possible to over-optimize your links’ A T.

Targeted  A T

Linkbuilders, or SEOs specialized in building links to a website, often control the A T from the links they build from other websites. These A T  are targeted – the keywords in the anchor text will match the targeted keyword of the page an SEO is trying to rank on.