Anchor Text
Revision as of 22:31, 18 October 2010 by Suzi Ziegler (talk | contribs) (→Ahoy, what is anchor text?)
Ahoy, what is anchor text?
Anchor text, also known as a link label or a link title is the clickable text in a hyperlink. Often, seen in blogposts or online articles, anchor text is a word or string of words that when clicked takes the user to a specific site or page.
Anchor text is a visually appealing replacement to a traditional link beginning with http://, etc. Traditional http:// links interrupt the flow of a piece by being visually distracting. When comprised of keywords, anchor text add SEO value by enriching a piece.
Words comprising anchor text are important because they can determine the ranking a page will receive by search engines.
Why is strong anchor text important?
Anchor text gives the user relevant descriptive or contextual information about the content of the link's destination.
While anchor text may or may not be related to the actual text of the URL the link might look like this: Wikipedia
In this example, the anchor text is "Wikipedia"; the unwieldy URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page displays on the web page as Wikipedia, contributing to clean, easy-to-read text.
Tips for creating powerful anchor text: