SEO – Anchor Tag
Anchor tags or Links play an important role in Search Engine Optimization.
What is Anchor Tag:
Anchor Text is the clickable text in the HTML page. Anchor tags create links between pages & websites. You can Read more about them in Anchor tag links tutorial
SEO Anchor Tag
There are many advantages of using SEO friendly anchor tag. This tutorial will not only covers about the SEO anchor text but also about other factors related to SEO anchor tag optimization.
Best practises to optimize links for SEO
Anchor text can be categorized into following categories:
- Choose descriptive and relevant anchor text.
- Use title attribute within anchor tag.
- Keep optimum and well organized links structure.
- Frequently Check broken internal/external Links and fix them.
- If you choose an image for linking, use alt and title attribute.
- All links should be clearly visible
- Use ‘nofollow’ if you do not want SEO to follow your links
Using proper SEO anchor text:
Anchor tag’s visible text provides brief information about the page you are linking. Therefore, Anchor text should be meaningful, action oriented, short and easy to understand. Sometimes it is not possible to follow all this but you should think about the user first.
Anchor text can be categorized into the following categories:
- Keyword Oriented: This type of anchor text includes service or product keywords to which we are linking. For example SEO Tutorial, SEO Training, Samsung Galaxy. This is the recommended anchor text for SEO.
- Branded Text: This includes text and keywords like: “Microsoft”, “Google”, “Amazon”. This is used when we need to link to these brands directly.
- Generic Text: This type of text includes: “Click here”, “Read more”, “This article”, and “Learn more”. Avoid these generic texts because they do not tell about the kind of information they are linked to.
- URL or Naked text: This type of text display URLs directly as text such as: “https://tutorialsclass.com/learn/seo” and “https://support.google.com/webmasters”. This should be only used where we need to display transparent website URL. For example, Email from banks or emails related to password reset uses this type of text.
- Image anchors: Sometimes we use a link on image rather than text. Always use ‘alt’ and ‘title’ attribute with image tag here.
Keep optimum number of links on webpage
It is important to keep an optimum number of links on your website. There is no fix criteria or limit for the maximum number of links. It depends on the type of website. For example, if you have a directory based website, there will be a lot of links under different categories. However, there are only a few links on small business websites.
You should always think from the user perspective. Never fill your webpage with links just of SEO. This can penalize your website as spam by Google or other search engines.
Similarly, if your website does not have enough link to relevant pages, a user may find it difficult to locate important content. Use well-organized links (and navigational menu) on each page.
Always use relevant title in anchor tag
The Anchor Title plays a very important role for search engines. Sometimes, our SEO anchor text is not much descriptive (such as ‘learn more’ and ‘click here’). Here title attributes come into the role. They tell search engines as well as users (by mouseover link) that where this link is going.
Use nofollow where required
Whenever we have an internal or external link, Google follows them. It is like our site votes in favour of that linked content. However, in some situations, we do not want to upvote for the external link because we are not sure about linked content. We can use rel=”nofollow” attribute in an anchor tag to instruct search engines saying “don’t count this”. That way, no follow links get no love or link juice.
For an example, sometimes garbage or spammy links in our comments section can harm our website’s SEO. That is why most SEO section adds nofollow to comments link.
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