Anchor text

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The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. Since 1998, some web browsers have added the ability to show a tooltip for a hyperlink before it is selected. Not all links have anchor texts because it may be obvious where the link will lead due to the context in which it is used. Anchor texts normally remain below 60 characters. Different browsers will display anchor texts differently.

Overview

Anchor text usually gives the user relevant descriptive or contextual information about the content of the link's destination. The anchor text may or may not be related to the actual text of the URL of the link. For example, a hyperlink to the English-language Wikipedia's homepage might take this form:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>

The anchor text in this example is "Wikipedia"; the unwieldy URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page displays on the web page as Wikipedia, contributing to clean, easy-to-read text.

Common misunderstanding of the concept

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Webmasters sometimes tend to misunderstand anchor text. Instead of turning appropriate words inside of a sentence into a clickable link, webmasters frequently insert extra text such as this:

Today our troops have liberated another country from tyranny. To know more, click here.

The more concise way of coding would be:

Today our troops have liberated another country from tyranny.

This proper method of linking is beneficial not only to users, but also to the webmaster as anchor text holds significant weight in search engine rankings. Most search engine optimization experts recommend against using "click here" to designate a link.

Search engine algorithms

Anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page. The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps, as the tendency was, more often than not, to hyperlink words relevant to the landing page.

Webmasters may use anchor text to procure high results in search engine results pages. Google's Webmaster Tools facilitate this optimization by letting website owners view the most common words in anchor text linking to their site.^[1] In the past, Google bombing has been possible through anchor text manipulation; however, in January, 2007, Google announced it had updated its algorithm to minimize the impact of Google bombs.^[2]

References

1. ^ Fox, Vanessa (2007-03-15). "Get a more complete picture about how other sites link to you". Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/get-more-complete-picture-about-how.html. Retrieved 2007-03-27. 
2. ^ Cutts, Matt (2007-01-25). "A quick word about Googlebombs". Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html. Retrieved 2007-03-27.