The clickable text in a hyperlink is known as anchor text. Anchor text should be relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than generic text, according to SEO best practices. Although it is possible to change the colour and underline through HTML code, blue, underlined anchor text is the most common because it is the web standard. Anchor text keywords are one of many signals used by search engines to determine the topic of a web page.
Anchor Text with Exact Match
The anchor text is also referred to as the link label or the link title. The words in the anchor text help search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing determine the page’s ranking. Links without anchor text are common on the internet and are referred to as naked URLs or URL anchor texts. Different browsers display anchor text differently, and using anchor text correctly can help the linked page rank for those keywords in search engines. The same keywords are highlighted in an exact match anchor text as the targeted keyword of a web page.
Variation in Anchor Text
A Google spam filter is activated when websites aggressively build exact match anchor text links. Exact match anchor text on web pages that link to your website is unnatural. A little variation in anchor text is natural, just as a large portion of the internet’s links are naked URLs.
Manipulation of Anchor Text
Because anchor text is a search engine signal for relevance, it is possible to over-optimize it.
Anchor Text with a Purpose
Link builders, or SEOs who specialise in constructing links to a website, frequently control the anchor text of the links they construct from other websites. These anchor texts are targeted in the sense that the keywords in the anchor text will match the targeted keyword of the page that an SEO is attempting to rank on.
Anchor Text for Backlinks
A backlink is a link that comes from another website. The anchor text used by other websites when they link to your website is referred to as the backlink anchor text. The anchor text of these backlinks assists search engines in determining which keywords a web page should rank for.
Backlinks with One-Way Anchor Text
A one-way anchor text backlink occurs when website A links to website B with an anchor text backlink but website B does not link back to website A. SEOs seek out one-way anchor text backlinks because PageRank juice flows from one domain to another. The more one-way anchor text backlinks a web page has from websites with high PageRank, the higher it is thought to rank in search engines.
Excessive Use of Anchor Text
You can have too much anchor text on a page, just like you can have too much keyword stuffing. Excessive anchor text occurs when a page contains too many keywords that link to too many other pages on a website, or when all of the keywords link to the same page but with different anchor texts. Excessive use of anchor text on your website can result in Google penalties because it is regarded as a spammy, user-unfriendly practice.
Final Thoughts
Since quality link builders are actively and pragmatically building links to their website with targeted anchor text, specific keywords will account for a larger portion of a page’s overall anchor text distribution.
