Optimizing Anchor Text in Your Webpages

Anchor text is a text used to link one page to another. It gives a brief description or initial information about what can be found on the link destination. In an on-site search engine optimization ( SEO ), anchor text helps users and robots navigate across the site to reach for the topic ( keywords ) they want to know more. In this way, anchor text drives search engines to index a page with higher relevance to a particular keyword. At the same time, the anchor text also gives a point of authority to the link destination with respect to the keyword. This dual effect of anchor text makes it very important in SEO web design for both on-page and off-page optimization. Here are some few tips in constructing highly optimized anchor text :

1. Use keywords as anchor text. Rather than using lengthy description about the link destination or “Click here” phrase, a keyword is enough to give visitors and spiders what would be the content of the target page.


2. Emphasize anchor text. Make your anchor text (keyword)relatively larger than any word in the paragraph. A sample HTML code would be:
   
   SEO Web Design
   


3. Use your main keyword to link back to the Homepage. Most of site architecture requires every page to link back to the Homepage. Rather than use the phrase “Home” or Go back to Home”, you can make your main keyword, say “SEO Web Design Home” to link back to Homepage.


4. Do not spam so many anchor texts in your Homepage. A sitemap will do its part for this purpose. You can try to insert keywords in your Homepage's content but do not make it look so close to each other that your reader will be confused which link they have clicked.


5. Place an anchor text for other highly-related pages on the current page where a certain keyword was greatly optimized or discussed in details. This will enable search engine spiders to crawl more deeply on other pages of your site highly relevant to the topic niche.

Although anchor text is a powerful aspect in SEO web design, it must not be overused. Remember that search engine spiders have time limit to crawl for subdomains of your site. Having to find so many links jumping to and fro might deprive corresponding content page of each of your keywords.