Anchor Text - Importance to SEO

If you are embarking on a search engine optimization project for your website then you may have heard people mention anchor text. However you may not be sure exactly what this is or how it can help you improve your rankings. This article aims to demystify this issue and help you obtain those high rankings quicker.

What is Anchor Text?

When a link is placed on a page, the text that you click to follow the link is called the anchor text. By way of an example if you were to see the sentence "Dazines - SEO Company based in London UK." Then if you were to click on "SEO Company" you would be redirected to www.dazines.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation.php and "SEO Company" would be the anchor text.

Why is Anchor Text Important?

The Anchor Text used to link to sites can help increase your ranking in the search engines for the linking text.

Probably the best example of this can be seen if you search for "Click Here" in Google. You will find if you do this that the first result is www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html where you can download Adobe Reader. One of the interesting things about this search is that the term "Click Here" does not appear anywhere on the page.

So the question is, why does this website appear first for the term "Click Here"? The answer can be seen in the number of sites that have downloads that require you to have Adobe Reader installed on your computer. You will find that all of these sites have the phrase "To download Adobe Reader click here" where "click here" is hyperlinked to the above page. The sheer volume of sites that have this has raised Adobe to the top of the search results.

The above example shows that the anchor text that is used to link to your site is extremely important if not vital to your ranking in the search engines.

How can I use Anchor Text to Improve My Ranking?

Looking at the above example it is clear that the anchor text used to link to your site is one of the most important things in obtaining high search engine rankings. As a result, if you are getting a link to your site you should always request the text that is used to link to you.

By way of an example, if we want Dazines to rank highly for Website Design then when a site agrees to place a link to www.dazines.co.uk then we will ask them to use the anchor text "Website Design". The more sites we can get to link to us using our selected anchor text the greater our chance of ranking at the top in the search engines.

Conclusion

Anchor text is one of the most important things, if not The most important for getting a high ranking in Google and other search engines. As a result the use of anchor text when creating links should be something that comes at the top of your priority list when embarking on an SEO campaign.