Anchor Text: An Underestimated Lever in Search Engine Optimization

1. What is an anchor text?
2. Onpage and Offpage SEO - what benefit do anchor texts have?
3. The five most common variants of anchor texts
4. Setting anchor: This is how maintenance works in CMS
5. Examples of good anchor texts
6. Dos & Don’ts: This must always be observed with anchor texts

Search engines, like Google, evaluate anchor texts both on their own domain and on external domains. Many online marketers underestimate the power of these links - through this article, guest author Mandy Fröhlke will tell you how to optimize anchor links and the power of good anchor texts in search engine optimization.

What is an anchor text?

Anchor texts (engl. anchor text) are the clickable words of a link. The anchor text can consist of a term or a phrase.

Onpage and Offpage SEO - what benefit do anchor texts have?

Using anchor texts, you show users and search engines what content is behind the link / after a click - the subsequent URL. The more meaningful the link text is, the better users and search engines can understand the subsequent content. This applies to both internal and external links - for Onpage as well as Offpage SEO.

Particularly bad anchor text examples are: 'here', 'learn more' or 'read now'. No one understands what content is hidden behind these descriptions. And yet these anchor texts are common practice that you will find on countless domains.

Anchor text for internal linking

Therefore, when optimizing your own content, make sure that you only choose anchor texts that match the content of the linked page. As soon as you have large content hubs, it is important to always use the relevant money keyword of the respective linked pages when internally linking, to show Google and the readers what text has which focus.

For a pet food store, this means specifically that you link your wet food for dogs with a different anchor text than your dog dry food. The same then applies to the various brands etc. This is the only way you can ensure that users (and search engines) are guided correctly.

However, it is important that Google not only evaluates the anchor text of the link, but also the textual context. Internal links should therefore only be set where the context is appropriate and users receive thematically appropriate further information through the link. Please remember: we always optimize for people - not for search engines!

Anchor text for external linking

You usually have less influence on external link texts. Accordingly, you cannot simply modify the anchor texts - but you can contact the webmasters and ask whether the text can be modified. Good anchor texts can contribute to increasing the traffic on your own domain, as users prefer to click on reputable and appealing link texts.

Note that there is a risk that the backlink will be completely removed. And that the backlink profile looks unnatural if only money keywords are used. Therefore, it is best to first get an overview of your backlinks profile with a Backlink Audit. And then consider whether an adjustment is necessary or the existing external anchor texts are good.

Our Tip: If link building is a measure in your SEO strategy, also focus from the start on the use of appropriate and diversified anchor texts that also fit the context of the page. This saves you double work.

The five most common variants of anchor texts

Even though anchor texts are very diverse and individual, I will list the most common variants with some examples for you. This will give you a feel for how to set anchor texts (or not).

1. Anchor texts with brand reference (brand links)
   Example: Cooking has never been as easy as with WMF.
   Example: Leonardo offers you stylish glasses for every occasion.
   → In this variant, the company name is linked
2. Anchor texts with keyword reference
   Example: We have over 50 high quality dog food
   Brands in our online shop.
   Example: In case of emergency, be well secured: get information today about a occupational disability insurance.
   → In this variant, a keyword is used as anchor text
3. Domain name is used as anchor text
   Example: Find your next dream job on hays.de.
   Example: You can find out about current delays on ,bahn.de.
   → In this variant, the domain is linked
4. The URL is used as anchor text
   Example: A large selection of current Chanel glasses can be found here: https://www.brilledirekt.de/chanel-brillen.html
   Example: Free comparison of keyword research tools: https://digitly.de/up-date/keyword-recherche-tools/.
   → Unlike the example above, the anchor text consists of the complete URL
5. Interchangeable (generic) anchor texts
   ⁠Example: More information can be found here.
   Example: Our natural cosmetics are cruelty-free. Now download more information, download.
   → In this variant, the anchor texts have no added value and are interchangeable; Users do not recognize a reference to the target page

When creating anchor texts, content creators and webmasters have no limits. Often, the variants described above are also combined, so that long-tail links are created from the brand and keywords („Hiking shoes from Meindl are ...").

Setting anchor: This is how maintenance works in CMS

Most content management systems (CMS) are almost identically structured, so that setting anchor texts works similarly. In general, there are two different possibilities:

• Creating anchor texts via HTML
• Creating anchor texts via Editor

Variant one seems a bit more complicated at first glance. But if you look more closely, the links are also easy to understand and always structured the same way. In the following example you can see the representation in TYPO3, when texts are maintained via HTML:

If we extract one of these links, the structure is always as follows:

• Yellow = Link Tag (at beginning and end)
• Green = Attributes
• Blue = Target page / URL
• Red = Anchor text

So you can simply copy the example link from this article and simply swap your target page and the anchor, to set
HTML links yourself. Here is another example to visualize the structure:

However, it's even easier with the editors in your selected CMS (Variant two). In TYPO3, for example, you can mark the word you want to link internally and then click on 'Insert / Edit Link':

In WordPress, the editing view looks like this:

As you can see:Visually, both content management systems hardly differ from each other. If you use a different CMS, you will probably have a similar representation to create anchor texts.

Examples of good anchor texts

Depending on whether you are dealing with internal or external links, the evaluation criteria for good anchor texts are different. While external anchor texts usually consist only of the domain or the brand as well as bare URLs, an internal reference to a keyword should always be established.

Only variant five of the possibilities presented earlier should be avoided both internally and externally!

Good anchor text examples for the OMR domain:

• Get information about more OMR reviews
• Are you unsure which anchor text is right for the target page? A well-structured keyword research can help you.
• Search engine optimization is as complex as never before - our guideline helps you understand the most important terms.

It is important that you also sometimes use related terms or synonyms as well as longtail keywords as anchors, to also design the internal link profile variedly. Especially the longtail anchor texts usually arise due to the natural use of language in texts.

Our Tip:Content creators should write without specifying internal links. You can insert these afterwards, so that fine differences in the used anchor texts are created automatically.

For example, with a crawl, Screaming Frog SEO Spider number and anchor texts of the InLinks can be shown.

Dos & Don’ts: This must always be observed with anchor texts

In summary, I recommend you to bear a few things in mind when selecting and creating anchor texts.

Quick tips for internal anchor texts

1. Think about what content is on the target page and only link appropriate terms
2. Brand or domain links are unsuitable for internal linking
3. Anchor texts like 'here', 'read now' or 'find out more' are bad and should always be avoided
4. Develop a concept in advance, so that you do not always use the same anchor texts for different URLs, as this will not guide users or search engines well
5. Use a website crawl to get an overview of the number and anchor texts of the internal links
6. Each link text is an anchor text, i.e. link texts that do not arise through you
   need to be revised: therefore, share this knowledge with your content creation, external editors or UXers

Quick tips for external anchor texts

For external links (and anchor texts), it is natural and important to use domain and brand names

Only link 1-2 external domains per page so as not to give away too much link power

Also pay attention to the thematic reference, so that links and anchor texts are always chosen to match the content.