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All at Sea with Anchor Text?

Anchor text – what’s that? It’s the text that you click on in a hyperlink that takes you through to another website page – the bit that’s usually blue and underlined.

In recent weeks we’ve mentioned the importance of link building both within and to your website in strengthening your SEO performance. You may not have many opportunities to choose the text for external links to your website, but you can work on making the most of the links within your website. But how do you write the best text for these links?

Don’t overuse your keywords

A few years ago, it was common for keywords to be used obviously and overtly in anchor text. But times have changed and overuse of key words can lead to your website being seen as over optimised and being penalised. So don’t use your key words too often, and where you do, build them into broader phrases, so the word ‘plumber’ might become ‘Emergency plumber Darlington’.

Consider alternative keywords

 Another approach is to think about using alternative words that describe what you do. Now might just be the time to dig out that thesaurus gathering dust on your bookshelf and set to work building up a semantic field of synonyms for your key words. You could also think of more colloquial terms that describe what you do – the sort of phrases your customers use when chatting to you. Work on putting together a variety of natural sounding phrases to use in your links. Do ring the changes, so you’re not using the same anchor text throughout your website. Just be sure not to get too flowery or verbose, which brings us to the next point:

Keep it simple

Like much of the copy we’ve discussed, it’s best to keep anchor text short, clear and simple. Moreover it needs to be relevant to the pages you’re linking. The more relevant the anchor text is to the pages you’re building a link between, the more it will help both pages to rank well in search results, so says Moz and they know. Moreover, keep the anchor text descriptive of the page you’re linking to. Perhaps the most straightforward way achieve this is to use the title of the page you’re linking to, like this one on Anchor text. It’s clear what the page you’re moving to is about and makes for an easy user experience too.  So there you have it, our guide to making the most of your anchor text – we hope you’ve found it useful and that you’re no longer all at sea.

Ahoy there! Need help with your website design or copy? Then contact the team at Webahead, we’ll be happy to help get your website shipshape and fit for purpose, with all the right anchor text aboard and more besides.

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