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 is, more often than not, to hyperlink words relevant to the landing page. Anchor text can also serve the purpose of directing the user to internal pages on the site, which can also help to rank the website higher in the search rankings.
Webmasters may use anchor text to procure high results in
search engine results pages.
Google's
Webmaster Tools facilitates this optimization by letting
website owners view the most common words in anchor text linking to their site. In the past,
Google bombing was possible through anchor text manipulation; however, in January 2007, Google announced it had updated its algorithm to minimize the impact of Google bombs, which refers to a prank where people attempt to cause someone else's site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query. Moving forward, Google would be paying more attention to a diversified link profile, which has a mix of anchor text and other types of links. However, a 2016 study of anchor text influence across 16,000 keywords found that the presence of exact and partial match anchor links continues to have a strong correlation with Google rankings. An August 2016 study conducted by Moz found that Exact and partial match domains can be affected by over optimization penalty since Google considers domain Brand and naked URL links as Exact match.
Terminology There are different classifications of anchor text that are used within the search engine optimization community, such as the following: ;Exact match: An anchor that is used with a keyword that mirrors the page that is being linked to. Example: "
search engine optimization" is an exact match anchor because it's linking to a page about "search engine optimization". ;Partial match: An anchor that is used with a keyword and a variation that mirrors the page that is being linked to. Example: "
different search engine optimization techniques" is a partial match, anchor text as it links to a broader concept (i.e., to the article about search engine optimization). ;Branded: A brand that is used as the anchor. "
Wikipedia" is a branded anchor text. ;Naked link: A URL that is used as an anchor. "
www.wikipedia.com" is a naked link anchor. ;Generic: A generic word or phrase that is used as the anchor. "
Click here" is a generic anchor recommended against on grounds of
usability and
accessibility. Other variations may include "go here", "visit this website", etc... ;Images: Whenever an image is linked, Google will use the
"alt" attribute as the anchor text. ;Empty: Whenever an image is linked, and the "alt" attribute is empty. ;Latent semantic indexing:
Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is a method used by
Google to determine similar keywords. == See also ==