A fundamental part of digital marketing is search engine optimisation or SEO. If you're wondering why, the answer is simple, thanks to this technique you make your website appear among the first search results, and given the high competition, fighting for this ranking is very important.
Today we tell you what anchor text is, what types of anchor text exist, and why they are a key factor in SEO link building strategy. Keep reading to make sure you don't miss a thing!
what is anchor text?
Anchor text is the text that is displayed in a link, this can be a word, phrase or part of a text, in other words, it is a phrase or a word that has a link embedded in it that users can click on and redirects them to a different page.
Anchor text provides further content information and is used to take the user to another website of interest, related to the topic, or to a call to action or CTA.
It is common to find these anchor text in any publication on the internet, whether on a website or blog. They avoid overloading the content with too much information, they serve to expand in a natural way. That is, if you are talking about a particular topic, for example about SEO, and you mention the linkbuilding strategy, add a hyperlink that leads to a website or other content that explains in detail this topic. So if the user wants to complete their knowledge and you avoid a long and overloaded text.
Types of anchor text
Now that you know what an anchor text is, here is a list of the different types you can find:
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exact keyword
This anchor text is anchored to the exact keyword you want to position. This should be included in a natural way, not forced into the text, but we can't use it in excess, because Google can penalize you for excessive use.
For example, if your exact keyword is "SEO", the link to another website must be in that word.
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long tail
it is very similar to the exact keyword, but with the difference that it is a long tail keyword, which means that the correspondence is partial and the anchor text is longer because there are several terms.
This is useful for more specific searches, for example: search engine optimisation techniques or SEO.
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branding
These are anchor texts that include the name of the brand, company, website, etc. They are hardly considered spam because they refer to a website that is generally safe. A serious example would be: find out more about SEO on Hubspot's blog.
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brand plus keyword
It is the combination of the previous type plus the use of the keyword. For a better understanding we continue with the previous example: find out more about SEO on the Hubspot blog.
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site URL
This type of anchor text uses the URL of the landing page itself. To give you a more visual example: find out more about SEO on the blog of (URL of the site you want to direct the user to)
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image anchor text
The anchor text is not inside a text, but an image that when clicked on redirects us to the destination page. It is perfect for not always using links in the texts and to vary a little, besides, as you well know, an image attracts much more attention.
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generic
These are anchor texts that use expressions such as "click here", "continue reading here" or "learn more". The negative side of adding links in these texts is that you do not provide any information, so they are not very recommendable. Nobody is going to find you looking for a "click here".
why is anchor text so important for SEO?
We mentioned earlier that anchor text is an important part of SEO, as it helps a website's organic ranking. Anchor texts are relevant to search engines, as well as boosting your linkbuilding strategy and backlinks.
If your website or blog contains meaningful links to relevant pages within your content, search engines will consider your site as relevant and that you provide value to users.
Not only that, you help to rank better for your keywords, you add more information without overloading the texts, you make your content more attractive.
But keep in mind to do this technique correctly, because adding links without rhyme or reason, including too many dubious URLs or to topics that have nothing to do with your sector, abusing keyword anchor text, etc, can be considered Black hat SEO by Google. This means that the search engine will penalize your website for bad SEO.
In conclusion, as you have read throughout this post, anchor texts are an important element within the SEO strategy. You have to take into account the penalties that search engines like Google can take, so you should do this practice carefully, but do not forget it or leave it in the background.
We recommend that you choose relevant keywords and make sure that the websites you want to redirect users to are trustworthy. Anchor texts also help you to link to your internal content.
we hope you enjoyed the reading and that we have answered your questions!
