Is the Anchor Text a Google Ranking Factor and How?
Anchor text explains the context of your content to the users. And it is also an important Google ranking factor. The use of the anchor text combined with keywords is one of the excellent SEO practices.
An anchor text assists the search engines to learn about the variety of web pages you’re linking with. It is important to find what would be the best outcomes for a website. Anchor text comprises words or phrases that the person clicks to find and navigate to the URL link in the text of the article.
Anchor text is an important ranking factor that helps the search engines to join the URLs with specific keywords. It offers the visitors the right context especially if they are ready to proceed. Also, it affects things in terms of the website ranking. There is evidence that Anchor Text is an important ranking element.
The anchor text’s significance pertains to what Google wants you to accomplish. Anchor text helps give your visitors an excellent user experience as you increase the websites’ accessibility with contextual text linking.
An important guideline to optimize a website’s SEO is that visitors get a user experience. The various optimization techniques on the internet are meant to enhance the user experience in general to improve search engine rankings. Anchor text also gets listed accounts for a better user experience and is a primary ranking factor.
When the site is designed to offer a great user experience for humans, it can be closer to being optimized for search engines.
What is Anchor Text, and how does it fit with SEO?
Google will understand the way a web page is linked to (a targeted webpage). It is all related to how well you analyze the words you use in the anchor text. If the webpage is linked to a URL with the anchor phrase such as “top 3 Mexican restaurants in New York City,” Google takes care of the various website users they get directed to.
If you use the right generic words (such as “click here”), you won’t find in Google what the site is all about. The way a website includes descriptive text around the anchor text facilitates the users to navigate the site. It also helps Google do the same.
Anchor text also improves the customer experience in several ways. A descriptive anchor text helps them to know the pages they’re searching for, quickly. For example, if a user clicks on a text to read an article related to a claim, they may also like to read the article to find out the claim’s origin.
Experts of SEO India use the generic anchor text to assist the users to find the page they need to look for. Also, it helps Google to understand a lot about the targeted page. So, it is preferable to use descriptive anchor texts over generic words or phrases.
Anchor text also improves the users’ accessibility to the most important pages, even for patients with compromised physical abilities such as web users with visual impairment.
Visually impaired people benefit by turning on screen readers to browse the internet. It means that the software they use can read the complete text on the web page such as the links especially if the user is browsing a website.
If you direct a user from “click here” or “read more”, then you must know how to place all the important links that they want to find on a webpage. If they don’t find the links helpful, it can be highly frustrating for visitors who won’t like to return to the site next time.
Accessibility is important to give the best user experience. If you think it is not relevant to a particular user, it will be important for search engines.
It is imperative to use descriptive anchor texts while inserting links onto the page. You must consider that it is a good practice listed by Google in its SEO Starter Guide. SEO is a vast subject and experts have worked well to decode it. . There is evidence to support Anchor Text as an essential factor in ranking.
Google will deliver accurate results for the users. Website owners must be supportive of the search engine in this context if they want to achieve the right results. Google has clearly stated the standards it has set for website owners to consider and follow for optimizing the indexing of the pages in the search engine.
Optimizing your website ranking in Google demands that you’re listening appropriately to Google. There are important points that Google tells you about anchor words?
Here’s what the Google SEO Starter Guide states:
“…the more precise the anchor text you use, the more straightforward it is for users to navigate it and for Google to understand what the webpage you’re linking to is about.
By using appropriate anchor text, Search engines and users can easily discern what linked pages are.”
Here are some best practices you must follow:
- Create a descriptive text in place of off-topic or generic text.
- Prepare a concise text in place of a boring long paragraph or in place of using an entire paragraph.
- It should be an easily identifiable and visible form of the standard text.
- Use descriptive text to create internal links. And ensure that you do not overuse the keywords.
John Mueller from Google confirmed that anchor text is an important ranking factor when it came to answering a particular question to SEO community members.
Anchor text is frequently discussed in the questions that Mueller answers on forums. An example where Mueller has talked about the elements of user experience of anchor text:
“If you’re changing internal anchor texts to ensure it’s easier comprehendible by users, it also assists search engines better comprehend the context of these pages. Therefore, I’d opt for it.”
It is easy for websites to change their rankings as they create links employing specific keywords as anchor text. Anchor text gets weighed so the websites will rank for terms that did not appear with page text.
At one time, Adobe ranked for the word “click here” as it was the most common anchor text used by site owners to link with PDFs. Google, then realized that spammers misused the excessive value of the anchor texts. They took care of the problem in 2012 with the publication of Google’s Penguin algorithm. This focused primarily on the use of manipulative link-building strategies.
Nowadays, websites that try to manipulate the search rankings using an anchor text that exactly matches popular texts find that their efforts get disregarded in place of being rewarded.
Conclusion: Anchor Text is a Rank Factor
Google tells us that usage of suitable anchor text is greatly useful for ranking search results and helps you get a higher understanding of web pages. It helps you to carry out relevant searches for finding the best matching pages.
The anchor words also indicate ranking which is not just close to how the Penguin algorithm gets ranked for phrases that they needed to take care of as they created several keyword-rich hyperlinks.
