Anchor text analysis – must be the main material for improving the search engine rankings of your website. Not only that but search engines like Google will notice the words you pick up to link and how often they are used. In this way, the words chosen should concise your anchor text. Make sure to analyze the text carefully so it will not sound spam and look over-optimized.

Let’s dive into the following text deeper to find out!

Anchor Text: What Is It?

anchor text analysis — Photographer: Firmbee.com | Source: Unsplash

You need to know that SEO is complex. It usually comes with a lot of little details and anchor text is one of them. Simply put, an anchor is a text that you usually click so you can move from one internet destination to another. In other words, the text anchors two different sites on the internet.

Most of the time, anchor texts link pages on websites. However, these texts can also help you to link to a wide range of documents like PDFs and download them. In this way, it is important that you click anchors from trusted sites only. Also, you need to make sure that the URL is legitimate simply by using your mouse to hover over the link. But, don’t click it for your own sake!

Why Is It Important?

Anchor texts in SEO matter for some good reasons. The texts are there to tell your audience what they will find before clicking the link. In other words, these texts are “the promise”. They allow you to peep to find out what might be on the other side of the link. That is why it is important for the anchor texts to be highly relevant.

Another reason why anchor texts are important is that they give information to Google algorithms about your content. Then, the anchor texts will be used by Google’s algorithms to help you avoid engaging in spammy practices. Not only that but the algorithms will also use the anchor texts to understand the topics linked to your copy.

How Do They Affect SEO?

Before starting an anchor text analysis, you should know how it affects SEO. Most of the time, Google uses anchor texts to find out what web pages are about. This practice allows Google to rank the anchor texts for the right keywords. For this purpose, the original Google paper has an entire section to discuss anchor texts.

Based on a statement by Google, anchor texts are there to give you a link with more objective descriptions. They can provide the description better than the pages can provide. This is possible to happen since anchors for backlinks usually come from third-party sources that are also neutral.

Step-by-Step Tip to Optimize Anchor Text for SEO

Many ways that you can optimize your anchor text for SEO. Take a look at the following easy steps to optimize anchor text in SEO.

1. Avoid Toxic Sites

Bear in mind that Google cares about the websites that you link to. You will get a penalty from the search engine if you link to websites that promote hate, spread false information, and engage in spammy practices. You need to be very careful with these linking things. The link can still cause damage to your website even if it has good intentions.

This practice from Google is named the co-citation principle. It is aimed at removing hate-promoting websites from the equation. The practice also helps to check the Alexa ranking website.

2. Use Relevant Anchor Words

Relevancy in SEO is key. So, this is important that the anchor words you choose make sense with the topic on the other side of the link. Bear in mind that search engines like Google take advantage of information gathered to understand more about web pages.

The information is also used to determine how critical the anchor words are so that Google can appropriately rank them in keyword searches. Meanwhile, picking up random words for anchors to show diversity will only lead your website to be qualified as clickbait. This will annoy your audience as a result.

3. Distribute Anchor Text Types Wisely

Randomness can be great for anchor texts. Most of the time, the distribution of the anchor texts is as follows 30% – 40% is for branded anchors; and similar for partial match anchors but different for related, random, generated, exact match, and other anchors between 20% – 40%.

4. Look at the Surrounding Text Carefully

When conducting anchor text analysis, you also need to check the surrounding text carefully. A recent BERT update on Google shows that the search engine changes its strategy to meet both the surrounding context and human language.

Most of the time, people do not look at the anchor text solely to decide if they want to continue to click and read the entire page. People tend to read the surrounding sentences to find out what they might find on the other side of the link.

That is why you need to pay attention to the surrounding context as well. Avoiding using the same anchor texts throughout the whole page will be beneficial. This is because over-optimization of the anchor text will lead you to get a penalty from Google.

Final Thoughts

To conclude, anchor text plays a critical role to keep your website’s SEO healthy. Not only that but the anchor text can tell your audience where they can get more information about your content. Additionally, it can also tell what you will find on the other side of your link.

For the reasons above, anchor texts can’t be just an afterthought when it comes to SEO ranking. You need to make sure that you carefully pick the types of anchor texts as well as the words used.

Also, keep in mind that moderation and diversity are keys for most things SEO. Thus, be creative and always diversify your anchor-type tags. Make sure that you avoid keyword stuff for that purpose. This is also important to only link to reputable and relevant pages to optimize your SEO.