What Anchor Is Text and Why it is Important

If you are involved in SEO then you have probably heard about anchor text, and using it with your backlinks. Most resources take it for granted that you already have an understanding of what anchor text is. Most also assume that you know why anchor text is important. If you do not understand what anchor text is or why it is important then you need to read this and find out.

Anchor text is a term used to describe the text on a clickable link. As an example, on this link: Yoursite the word 'Yoursite' is the anchor text. Any time you see a clickable link the text which you can click on to take you to a different website, or webpage, is known as anchor text. But why is it important?

Anchor text is very important for a few different reasons, the first of which is SEO. The whole point of building backlinks for SEO benefits is to be able to rank high up in search engine results for a particular keyword or key phrase. Affixing your keyword, or key phrase, as an anchor text on a backlink provides SEO benefits to that backlink. It is one of a number of factors, including relevancy, authority of the page and do follow, which determines how powerful a backlink is and how much it will help you in search engine rankings. Because of this you should always affix backlinks to your website with your keyword, or keyphrase, in the anchor text.

Another way in which anchor text is important is for actual readers. If you have a link up that is a big long URL as a link to your website then who is going to click on it? Even if they do click on it they will not know what your website is about so they can hardly be targeted or well converting traffic. If you, instead, use a descriptive word or phrase that describes what your website is interested people may click the link and come to your website.

Hopefully now you have learned just what anchor text is and the two ways in which it is very important. From now on be sure to always affix proper anchor text to all links, both backlinks and links within your website, to reap the benefits. Remember, nobody will know what your website is about if your links don't contain anchor text!