Anchor text isn’t going to make-or-break a website, but it’s worth understanding how it works – especially for writers looking to observe SEO best practices.
But first, a little roleplay. Imagine you’re a web-crawling spider bot. You’re crawling your way down yet another blog about avocados.*
You’re two paragraphs down and you hit an external link.
Straightaway, you’ve got three jobs to do.
- You’ve got to make a note of the site that’s being linked to – good news for them!
- You’ve got to record where the link came from – the site you’re on.
- You’ve got to record the words that were used to link, to help you and your Googly spider bosses understand why that other page is getting linked.
Now imagine you’re human again (doesn’t have to be for long, if you’ve really enjoyed being a spider bot).
Every time you add a link, you create a bank of information for the bots. Most of that information is being used for the page you’ve linked to, it’s true. But some of that data inevitably reflects back on you and the words you’ve used to describe stuff.
So in effect, you can use linked anchor text to create a clearer map (for the bots) of what your article is about. Which makes it easier for search engines to rank your article, when it’s the best match for a particular searcher.
That doesn’t mean hammering your main keyword over and over again, by the way. That’s not a good look (and it’s been a bad idea since Google’s Penguin Update, back in 2012). Think of your anchors and links as providing context – is this an article about how avocados might be going out of fashion in posh restaurants? (I’ve no idea if that’s true, because I’m not very posh.)
An article like that might have links to interviews with top chefs, a couple of restaurant sites, and maybe some surveys from food publications or from food retailers.
Those links are all hints to the bots about what kind of article you’ve written about avocados. Because there are plenty of different things to talk about with avocados. And if you were looking for something avocado-related, you wouldn’t just google ‘avocados’ and expect to find the information you need.
You might want a recipe. You might want to rage against the avocado-munching wokerati. Or you might be trying to figure out a low-impact lifestyle, and you’ve heard that avocado farming wipes out shedloads of bees.
Whatever the angle, you’ll want your anchor text to help summarise it.
So, what’s the best way to use anchor text?
The different types of anchor text
We’ll stick with our avocado theme, and our imaginary article about avocado’s culinary decline, while we look at the different ways to create effective anchor text.
Try and choose an anchor text style that gives your reader a good idea of what they can expect from the link, as well as providing the most relevant keyword/contextual opportunity for your web page or article. These anchor text types (and their uses) are relevant for both internal and external links.
Exact match. Your anchor text reflects the content (and primary keyword) of the destination page. “In a recent Bobby Garibaldi interview, he said he’d never touch another avocado.”
Partial match. The anchor text uses a keyword variation of the destination page’s primary keyword. “In a recent interview with top chef Bobby Garibaldi, he said all avocados should be sent to the moon in a rocket.”
Branded. The brand name of the destination website is used as anchor text. “In the recent Asda interview with Bobby Garibaldi, Bobby became upset, screaming, ‘Why is it even called a pear?’”
Image. For linked images, alt text should be used to describe the destination page. This is also best practice for alt text accessibility. Obviously, this image isn’t linked because Bobby Garibaldi’s actually fictional (gasp). But if he did exist, he’d look a bit like this;
Generic. Yeah, don’t do this. “You can read the recent interview with famous avocado-hating chef Bobby Garibaldi – just follow this link to read more.”
Remember back when you were a spider, up at the top of this blog? The words ‘this link’ aren’t going to provide much context, are they? It’s 2023, nobody needs you to explain how links work. And Google’s John Mueller recommends not using generic anchors, so there’s that, as well.
*an unfortunate side effect of talking about avocados in an SEO copywriting blog – I’m likely to start ranking randomly for avocado-related searches now. Which is of no use to either avocado lovers or me.
Nevertheless, it’s still better to use a clear, concrete example, rather than taking my example as an opportunity to shoehorn in extra keywords about anchor text and SEO.
That’d just make the whole thing harder to read (and even less interesting than the average article about SEO, which is already pretty uninteresting, let’s face it). Reader first, always.