Write better anchor text, Good practices for anchor text – Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide User Manual
Page 13
Google's Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest
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Offer exclusive content or services - Consider creating a new, useful service that no other
site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story or
leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these
things.
•
Create content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around
your visitors' needs while making sure that your site is easily accessible to search engines
usually produces positive results.
Avoid:
•
inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines, but which
are annoying or nonsensical to users
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having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add
little value for users
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deceptively
, but displaying it to search engines
Write better anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor
tag .
This anchor text accurately describes the content on one of our article pages
This text tells users and Google something about the page to which you're linking. Links on your page
may be internal - pointing to other pages on your site - or external - leading to content on other sites. In
either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google
to understand what the page to which you're linking to is about.
Good practices for anchor text
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Choose descriptive text - The anchor text that you use for a link should provide at least a
basic idea of what the page linked to is about.
Avoid:
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writing generic anchor text like "page", "article" or "click here"
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using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to
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using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases (although there are
certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new website's
address)
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Write concise text - Aim for short but descriptive text - usually a few words or a short phrase.
Avoid:
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writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text