SEO Glossary Terms: Anchor Text

The anchor text is the section of an HTML link that is located between the close and end HTML tags. It is the part of the link that is seen on your web page by readers and the words that are usually underlined and clickable within the main body of content. When building SEO links to a web page, it is important to try and gain some level of control over the SEO anchor text that is used in inbound links because this can help to improve rankings for specific, relevant keywords.

Controlling the anchor text isn't necessarily an easy task. There are many ways of building SEO links for a page, and while some allow complete control, there is almost always an element of SEO link building that is left to chance. One area where this is especially true is in the generation of organic links, or those that offered naturally and freely by other websites without any intervention on you part.

Organic links are great to have but difficult to generate. Very high quality and unique content is essential, but so to is generating traffic to that page that will include other website owners. Once this occurs, many site owners will use either their own brief description, the title of the page, or your website name when writing the SEO link anchor text. Ensure that these are all keyword optimised and consider offering your own HTML linking code on the relevant pages of your site in order to keep even more control.