What is an anchor text?

Anchor text, also known as link text, is the hyperlinked text on a web page that leads to another web page or web site. In other words, it is the clickable text in a link. Anchor text is meant tell the user what to expect in the content of the link’s destination. For instance:

 In the image, there are a number of anchor texts like email marketing, deliverability tools, content creation, Web analytics software, search marketing and mobile marketing. Clicking on the text “email marketing” for instance, takes you to the page http://www.lyris.com/solutions/lyris-hq/email-marketing, a page dedicated about the company’s email marketing solution.

Anchor text and its implications on search engine optimization 

 Anchor text is an important search engine optimization factor. It is one of the elements that search engines evaluate when ranking websites for specific keywords. Search engines collect information by crawling around the web by following links i.e., hopping around from one page to another through the links on the page. Links then, are a fundamental necessity for search engines to identify websites and to go from one website to the other. Search engines use the links as indicators of the topic of the page they are about to visit.

Types of Anchor Text

 1. Internal Links: The hypertext that is pointing to page within the same website is called an internal link.

 From the search engine optimization point of view, the anchor text of an internal link:

a) ensures that all the pages within a site get crawled and indexed by the search engines.

b) helps to increase the page rank of an internal page.

c) increases the relevance of the linked page for the keyword that may be a part of the anchor text.

 In the  image, “email marketing” as an anchor text is an example of an internal link.

 2. Inbound Links: The links that are pointing to your site from other sites are known as inbound links. If more number of sites link to the webpage “http://www.lyris.com/solutions/lyris-hq/email-marketing” with “email marketing” as the link text, the search engine start associating the page with the term email marketing. In addition to the number of links, the relevance of the link is also important. An inbound link from a well known site about email marketing is more valuable than hundreds of links of an irrelevant website.

Targeting Keywords in Anchor Text

When a particular keyword is extremely relevant to a page in your website, try to make sure that links pointing to the page have the keyword in the anchor text. The more the instances of internal links and inbound links that point to the page with the keyword in the link text, the higher it will rank for that keyword. One needs to be cautious while doing this. If too many links suddenly appear to point to a page with the same anchor text in a very short period of time, then it can raise a red flag with the search engines. It is important to grow the links in a sustained manner over a period of time. Spread the effort over a long term period and also include variations of the keyword in the anchor text.

 Anchor Text and URL alignment

While getting the inbound links with the desired anchor text, make sure that you are linking to the appropriate page rather than always linking to the home page. For instance if desired link text is email marketing, then the link text should point to the email marketing page within the site and not the home page.

When effectively used over a long term, anchor text optimization through internal and inbound links can have a significant impact on your search engine optimization and help your website rank higher for the keywords present in the anchor text.

Contributed by Girish N N

Many SEO firms, to this day, believe that SEO is about content and links. While the importance of content and links cannot be undermined, a site’s architecture is equally important in achieving SEO compliance. There are many aspects that make for search friendly site architecture. With search engine algorithms becoming increasingly complex, it is no longer enough to achieve basic SEO compliance. For a website to be truly SEO compliant, it is becoming increasingly important to address every aspect of website architecture, content and linking. Here is a checklist of things that you need to address to achieve SEO compliant website design and architecture.

SEO Compliant Website Architecture Components

Each of the items listed below have an impact on the site’s architecture and design, either directly or indirectly. No SEO checklist can be complete without addressing all the aspects of SEO compliant website architecture listed below. Each of these aspects has a different level of impact on search results, but collectively can significantly make a difference to your site’s SEO compliance. Understanding their importance will help you ensure that you have an SEO compliant website structure, design, navigation and architecture.

• Spam Database: Make sure your site is not part of a spam database.
• Domain Renewal and Age: If your site is new, book it for 5-10 years. Even if your site has been around for a while, show serious intent by renewing the domain for 5-10 years. 
• Redirects: Avoid using meta refreshes or 302 redirects as far as possible. If a page in your site has moved, use a 301 redirect.
• Custom 404 Error Page: Use a custom 404 error page that has your site’s look and feel with links to all the important sections in your site.
• Robots.txt: Use the robots.txt file to block sections that you want to prevent search engines from crawling. Use it also to point search engines to your sitemap.
• HTML & XML Sitemaps: Sitemaps help visitors navigate your site. They also provide a list of URLs in your site to search engines and help them crawl the site better.
• Navigation: Do not rely exclusively on image-based navigation, image maps, forms or site-search based navigation. Also, avoid using AJAX, Javascripts or Flash as your exclusive means of navigation on the site. Text links are important and should be an integral part of your site’s design and architecture. Provide text links within the page content or provide for alternative text based navigation.
• Search Friendly URL Construct: The way your URLs are constructed can play a role in how your site ranks. Not using dynamic parameters, using keywords in the URLs and making sure the keywords are as close to the start of the URL as possible can all impact your performance in search.
• Cookies: Most sites use them. But do not make the download of a cookie a pre-requisite for browsing your site. Search engines cannot download cookies so they will not be able to access your site.
• Multiple Domain and duplicate content Issues: If you own multiple domains, do not host the same content on all the sites. Do not use plagiarized content from the web, do not have multiple copies of the same content on your site. Duplicate content can adversely impact your site’s performance.
• Title and Description Tags: Title and description tags are meant to summarize a page’s content for the search engine. Not using keywords in the title and description, not having titles and descriptions and/or having duplicate titles and descriptions can confuse search engines and prevent your site from ranking well.
• Page Load Time Factors: The faster your site loads, the better. Visitors to your site will love that they get access to information quickly. Search engines will be able to crawl and index more pages every time they visit your site. In turn, this will improve your site’s performance in search results.
• Broken Links & Error URLs: Every broken link is a dead end…to the visitors to your site and to search engines. Broken links also slow down the rate at which search engines crawl your site content. An error free site would mean a site that’s crawled well and a site that performs well in search results.
• Frames: Frame is a dated technology that can potentially block search engines from crawling and indexing pages from your site.
• Flash, JavaScript and AJAX: By default, search engines cannot index the contents of Flash, JavaScripts or AJAX. Use SWFObject if you are using flash and use noscript content to make sure some alternate text is presented to search engines when you use scripts.
• Externalizing JavaScripts and Styles: Instead of embedding styles and Javascripts on the page, save them as external files and call them from the page. This will reduce page weight and help pages in your site load faster.
• No Follow, No Index Attributes: Nofollow prevents search engines from following links and noindex prevents search engines from indexing pages in your sites. Use these attributes judiciously.
• W3C Compliance: Getting your site W3C compliant ensures that it is compatible across browsers and also that your site code is search engine compliant.

Good website architecture factors in all the above parameters and more. Make sure your site is SEO compliant in its design, structure and architecture. This will help the site rank much better in search results.

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Contributed by Tushar Prabhu