Transcript
Hi guys and welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is what is anchor text and why is it important for SEO? Anchor text is one of those things that I think people forget a lot about. It's just not something that you normally think about when it comes to your day-to-day. Anchor text can often be overlooked and it's something that I think is actually quite important in terms of link building and internal link building.
But again, this is Zupos SEO Talk & Tea, so I want to introduce the tea today. It's actually a tisane. My housemate gave it to me, for everyone to share, but no one's opened it. This is the first opening of it. The tea is called Magic Dragon. It's a fruit infusion of dragon fruit, apple, rose hip, hibiscus, and blackberry leaves. It is a tisane, so it's actually not a tea. It's a tisane, which is drunk like tea, but it's not actually a tea leaf.
We're going to go ahead and try this today. I just love the name Magic Dragon. But let's jump into what is anchor text and why is it important for SEO? Anchor text is really important and to define anchor text is, you know when you see a link, usually when you see a link, you hover over it, it turns blue, it gets underlined, and when you click it, it goes to another page. The anchor text is the text that is the URL. Let's say hyperlink says link, L-I-N-K. You hover over it, you click it, and you go to another page. The L-I-N-K is what you call the anchor text.
That is the text of the link. That's why they call it anchor text. Again, it is whatever is in the highlighted blue URL, whatever that is, that's the anchor text. Anchor text is the words in a URL string essentially. That's what an anchor text is. Why is this so important for SEO? Well, when you're driving links to your website, Google does read the link and that's very important. But another aspect of it is the context of that.
Yes, getting a link from a high value website is really important. It's really important to drive links, but the words in the anchor text mean a lot in terms of SEO purposes. Google uses the anchor text as a signal to determine not only is this company passing a vote or endorsement or link value to another company, they're also going to look at the anchor text about what is associated with that power.
For example, if we've got Joe Schmoe's Pizza and I get a link from another website and the link is coming to me, that's great, but if the actual anchor text of that link says, "Pepperoni pizza," Google will use that as a signal to say, "Okay, not only are they voting for him or that website, but they're also voting it with the context of pepperoni pizza. Therefore, that site must have some relevance when it comes to pepperoni pizza."
Where this becomes very important is if you're trying to rank for certain keywords, it's actually important to get links with anchor text for keywords that you're trying to optimize for. That's where anchor text becomes very important is that if you get a link, that's good, but Google sees that as a vote of endorsement. That's great and all, but how do they pivot or use that power alongside your SEO and how they rank your site?
That's where anchor text comes in. Anchor text help Google understand that context and better understand where that link equity is coming from, where it's going to, and what to try to optimize for. On an internal linking level, anchor text helps you structure the site. If you've watched our video of, what is an internal link, internal links we talk about in that video. How do you structure a website and organize everything?
When you're using anchor text for your internal links on your site, it also helps Google understand how are you're trying to organize everything. If you have internal links across your site pointing to the pepperoni pizza page and each one has anchor text that says pepperoni pizza, Google will get it.
They'll say, "Oh, we understand. Every time they mention pepperoni pizza, not only do they link to the product page of the pepperoni pizza page, but also the anchor text of all these internal links say pepperoni pizza. Therefore, we have very high confidence that this page is optimized for the pepperoni pizza keyword and therefore we will slot that accordingly."
That's why anchor text is so important. It gives the signals to Google to better understand what a site is trying to rank for on a page level, even on a domain level. When you're using link building tactics or internal link building tactics, ensure that you are keeping in mind the anchor text and you're using them strategically. There's a lot of great guides out there, but to be honest, you just use your intuition.
If you're trying to link to another page, use the actual keyword you're trying to optimize for. If you're trying to link build outside of your website, try to get the keywords in the anchor text and that will be very beneficial. I hope that was valuable guys. If you liked the video, please like and subscribe to us and I'm going to go ahead and pour my tea out. I've never had this before, so let's do a quick 15 second taste test, and then we can sign off.
Fruity. It's very much what I think a magic dragon would taste like. I don't know what dragon fruit tastes like, but I'm assuming this is what it tastes like. It's very fruity. It almost doesn't taste like a tea. It almost tastes like a juice. It's good though. I'll keep it in some of my other videos and I'll see how I feel about it. Generally, it takes me some time to see if I actually like a tea or not. Well, I'm going to go ahead and sign off guys. I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks.