What is Link Text?
Link text, more commonly known as “Anchor text” is the hyperlink you see on pages that internally or externally link to another page, it uses text as the anchor, and is usually easy to spot as it’s a different colour and often underlined. This is for a specific reason, as these links will point you to a page with more information or context on that topic.
For example, if you were writing an article on caring for indoor plants, you may want to provide external links to plant care product websites that provide further information, rather than trying to include all of the information in the article, making it long and unreadable.
What is Link Text used for?
Link text has two main uses,
- Improving site navigation and providing context for users.
- To help Google understand the content of the page you’re linking to.
The second use is commonly used in SEO (search engine optimisation), this is utilised by having external websites linking to a website using “anchor text” to provide context to Google about the linked site’s content, these are also known as backlinks. For example, if you had multiple websites back-linking to a website using anchor text such as “best cake recipes” and “best pie recipes”, Google will start to understand that the page or website provides valuable information on recipes.
Best practices for link text
Be Descriptive, But not too much
Use short descriptive text for your links, you want to ask yourself “How can I summarise the content on the page I’m linking to in 1-3 words?”, this will give users and Google enough information to know whether they want to click through for more information on the subject.
Avoid Generic anchor text
Using anchor text such as “click” or “read more” is not great for a couple of reasons, it doesn’t necessarily inform the user what they are clicking through to.
It also doesn’t provide Google with enough context to fully understand what page you’re linking to, this can affect your SEO performance if not utilised correctly.
Include Keywords Naturally
If you’re using anchor text for links as part of your SEO strategy, care must be taken that “money terms” aren’t used in a spammy or forced way. It should fit into your content naturally and make sense.
