Anchor text is the text (title) that appears within your hyperlink. When you found this webpage, you most
likely clicked on a hyperlink with some text that described the contents of this page. The text that appeared within
that link in called the Anchor Text, and it's arguably one of the most important aspects of SEO. Anchor text is
weighted very heavily in the search engine algorithms. Anchor text tells the engines about the content of your
WebPages, what the page is about, and how others are perceiving it. In essence, the anchor text is about the
relevancy of your webpage based on a keyword. Therefore your anchor text should always be completely relevant
to the landing page (destination page) and should contain your keyword or keyword phrase. Let's look at an example
of anchor text usage and how relevancy matters.
Anchor text should always be meaningful and relevant to your page content and the keyword(s) you're targeting.
For our fictional loan website, let's assume we get 75% of all our traffic from users in the state of Arizona,
most of them coming in through the home page. To capitalize on this traffic we create a page about "Student
Loan Consolidation Offices in Arizona", a page that contains information on student loan offices in Arizona
(our keyword phrase for the new page). What we want to do next is create a link on our homepage that will direct
users to the new loan offices page. Which of the following do you think is the best way to link the page?
THIS:
Attention Arizona students! Click here to view our complete listing of Student Loan Consolidation Offices in Arizona!
OR THIS:
Attention Arizona students! View our complete listing of Student Loan Consolidation Offices in Arizona!
The answer is obvious. By making the page title the anchor text, we're creating a highly relevant internal link that
is meaningful and useful to both users and search engines. The same methodology should be applied to all pages within
the site where an internal link would make sense. Please take a look at our
Linking Do's And Don’ts
page for more information on internal linking, anchor text, and general linking guidelines.
As you will see in part 3 of this guide, proper anchor text is crucial in your external linking campaigns and can
make the difference between being in the top 10 and not making the top 100 on your keywords. Next we'll take a look
at Sitemaps, what they are and why you should have them.