In the wild world of SEO, there are things we can easily control and things that are a bit tougher to keep in our grasp. Anchor text is one of those not-so-secret SEO ranking factors that, when implemented properly, can help improve rankings across your website. Best yet, it’s something that SEOs, web devs, and business owners can all control.
Improving your website’s anchor text takes a little planning, a little persistence, and it can take a lot of time. But, the SEO fruits of your anchor text labor are always worthwhile.
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink. In this link, word nerd, the anchor text is “word nerd” and the link is my website’s homepage (hi there!).
How Does Anchor Text Impact SEO?
As one of the seemingly countless SEO ranking factors, anchor text is absolutely crucial for SEO. When implemented properly, anchor text can help improve your website’s search engine optimization by:
- Providing context about the URLs being linked to
- Prioritizing crawling of your key URLs
- Reducing click depth
- Conveying the importance of linked URLs
- Improving keyword optimizations
- Reducing keyword cannibalism
Anchor text is one of the biggest keys in helping search engines better understand your website’s content conceptually and from a keyword perspective. It’s an important ranking factor to consider while managing your website, your content, and your backlink portfolio.
Anchor Text Best Practices
As website owners and SEOs, we have the ability to optimize our anchor text throughout all of our internal linking and through many of our link acquisition techniques. By following consistent and data-driven anchor text strategies, you can help bolster your site’s keyword rankings for your most valuable terms.
Building An Anchor Text Strategy
First, you’ll need to develop your anchor text strategy. I like to do this by taking a temperature check on how my most SEO-important pages are already performing. What keywords are they ranking for? Are these the keywords I want them to rank for? Where are my most important URLs ranking for their most valuable keywords?
Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console can help with taking a URL by URL look at keyword performance across a site.
From there, I like to make a spreadsheet where I’ll identify my target keyword bank for each of the crucial URLs on my site. This bank should include related keywords that I’d like each URL to rank for, with an average of 3-5 keywords per URL. The keywords should not overlap, each URL should have its own small keyword bank.
When identifying keywords for anchor text on your site, consider factors such as:
- User intent for those keywords
- Keyword relevancy
- Competition for the keyword
- Search volume
- Keyword trends, is this term diminishing in popuularity?
Here’s an example of a keyword bank for my website:
| URL | Keywords |
| https://elizabethhadden.com/ | Word nerd, Elizabeth Hadden, South Florida Copywriter |
| https://elizabethhadden.com/blog/ | SEO blog, SEO news, SEO blogger, |
So, using this in practice, anytime I’d link to https://elizabethhadden.com/ my anchor text would come from the column on the right and would be word nerd, Elizabeth Hadden (wow, feels really weird doing SEO for my own damn name), or South Florida Copywriter.
Now, here’s the patience part. Once you’ve built your banks of keywords for URLs across your site, stick to those same keywords whenever you’re linking to the indicated URL. This can take quite a while to have an impact, but over time you will help search engines better understand your website in a way that you’ve found most useful based on this keyword-centric approach. This can result in big, lasting keyword improvements for your most important terms.
Accurate Anchor Text Tips
When considering keywords for your anchor text, make sure you’re picking the most relevant terms for your URLs. One word can totally change the meaning of your keywords, so it’s important to ensure you’re understanding the intent of users searching those terms.
For example, if you have a page about interior remodeling for yachts, you won’t want to use anchor text that just says “interior remodeling.” Google searches of the term “interior remodeling” show home remodels, so this is not an accurate term for your URL about redoing yachts. You’d want to add the word “yacht” to your anchor text for your interior remodeling URL, so it’d say “yacht interior remodeling,” which is far more accurate.
Keep on Sailing!
Once you’ve anchored your anchor text strategy, it may take some time to see results and keyword improvements. But, as with all SEO steps, slow and steady is the name of the game. Happy anchor text sailing!
