Anchor Text And Backlinks

What is a Backlink?

A backlink is a link from a page on one website to another. Also called an inbound link, a backlink can bring visitors to your site from anywhere — a news site, a blog, an online directory, or a paid sponsorship.

Four Elements of a Backlink

Before diving into how backlinks influence search ranking, let’s break them down into their essential elements.

1. Start of the link tag
2. Destination URL
3. Anchor text
4. End of the link tag

The start (1) and end (4) of a link tag are the same, no matter what kind of link it is, where it sits, or where it points.

The destination URL (2) points to the page where users go when they click the link. 

Anchor text (3) is the word or phrase that makes up the visible link on a page. Anchor text is often styled with a different color from the surrounding text or underlined/bolded to stand out on the page. Anchor text can be descriptive and explain where the link leads, or non-descriptive, with generic language that offers no information about the page it points to. 

The anchor text of a link is a key factor in search optimization. 

In the same way that links allow users to navigate from one page to another, they also help search engine bots or “spiders” discover new pages and, ultimately, decide how to rank those pages for specific keywords.

This is where anchor text factors in. 

Anchor text can communicate which keyword themes belong to a link’s destination URL. When a search engine spider crawls a link with non-descriptive anchor text, it discovers the content of the destination page. But, when the same link contains keywords relevant to the page it points to, the content on the destination page becomes more closely associated with those keywords, improving its ability to rank for that search term.

Anchor Text and Backlinks

At this point, it is worthwhile to distinguish the difference between nofollow and follow links since this post is about anchors in the context of search engine optimization.

On the HTML side, the only difference is that a nofollow link contains an extra piece of code. In the example above, a nofollow link would look like this:

<a href=”https://www.semrush.com/analytics/backlinks/”rel=”nofollow”>Backlink Analytics Tool </a>

In the eyes of the Google algorithms, however, that tiny piece of code makes an enormous difference.

• Nofollow: Tells Google NOT to take the backlink into account when determining SEO value for either page. Since 1st March 2020 Google is starting to take nofollow links as a hint in determining a website’s position in SERP.
• Sponsored: Tells Google that this link was obtained through some agreements between you and a publisher.
• UGC (User Generated Content): Tells Google that the link (and the whole content) was placed on this page by users.
• Follow: Tells Google to give credit to the page you’re linking to and take it into account when scanning your links.

The discussion of no-follow links is really more of a topic for backlinks, but it is worth considering when you choose your anchor words as well (we’ll explain some details further below in the best practices). 

6 Ways to Make Sure Your Backlink Anchor Text Hits It Off with Your SEO

1. Make sure your backlink anchor text is diverse

In fact, the best practice to create a truly natural backlink profile is to use all of these different types of anchor text, depending on the situation. Diversity in backlinks looks much more natural, and helps your website to avoid getting a penalty.

2. Use exact keyword matches only as a last resort

Exact match anchor text can be dangerous. However, it also has the power to truly boost your website’s rankings. You just need to know when to use it.

For example, if you’re invited to do a guest post and are allowed to place a backlink within the content, this is a great place for an exact match.

Just keep in mind that exact match anchor text should make up the smallest percentage of the backlink anchor text you use. This will make the places where you do use it even more powerful, while keeping you penalty-safe.

3. Consistently check your backlink profile

Whenever you generate new backlinks, it’s very important to see how they’re affecting your website.

To do this, you need a tool that monitors your entire backlink profile, showing you which links are working and which are hurting you, along with the anchor text that each one is using.

Monitor Backlinks allows you to see all the details of your backlink profile in real time, as well as get instant notifications whenever you gain a new link.

This makes it easy for you to stay on top of all your links and catch any potential problems straight away. You’ll be able to check the exact anchor text used in each backlink, and determine how this affects your ranking.

4. Avoid exact keyword matches on backlinks from guest post bios and blog comments

exact match anchor text in the content of a guest post would be helpful to SEO.

However, you’ll need to be very careful when placing backlinks in guest post biographies or in blog comments.

Since Google will scrutinize these types of backlinks more carefully, it’s best to avoid exact match anchor text here.

5. Be careful of the anchor text used for internal links

there’s a strong warning here not to overdo it.

Just as Google searches for spammy inbound links from other websites, it will also penalize what it considers spammy internal linking. So, try to use diverse anchor text within your website as well.

6. Remember that relevancy is just as important as anchor text in backlinks

If you’re trying to improve your rank solely by adjusting the anchor text in your backlinks, this will not work. In order to really make your backlinks SEO-friendly, you’ll need to consider all the factors involved. In fact, relevancy between the two pages may even be more important than the anchor text used.

Remember: If your website has backlinks from spammy websites or websites that are completely unrelated in topic, this will hurt your rank no matter what anchor text was used.