Any opinions about the common anchor text?
-
Hey guys so I was reviewing my website to make sure there are no exact anchor texts repeated throughout the site.
But I was wondering what are your thoughts about the common (and useless) anchor text like "read more", "learn more", "see more information", "contact us", and things of that nature. These are usually repeated across the majority of sites out there, how does Google differentiate between over optimized anchor text and these common anchor texts?
-
I wouldn't worry too much about those. Just focus on keeping your site natural.
-
You are going to see very little benefit from optimized anchor text on internal links. Use the anchor text that will most encourage your users to keep clicking through. This doesn't mean necessarily "read more", though. Think about calls to action in anchor text that are more compelling.
-
These common or 'useless' anchor texts are what search engines grew up with. Before marketers started using anchor text to manipulate search engines, "read more," "learn more" etc was fairly common. Try focusing less on anchor text and more on the proximity of words around anchor text instead.
I'm not sure how Google differentiates between the two, but then again I don't really care because I don't use anchor text to improve rankings. I let my quality content do that.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should we use the same word in multiple mega menu link text?
We are currently working on a redesign of our site and I'm working on our mega menus. In the middle of this we had an agency evaluate our current/old site for improvements. (yes the timing is strange) One of the things they recommended is updating our link text in our mega menu. See image: old mega menu. The links are to pages for installation guides in our installation section. They recommended adding Installation to every link. To me this looks spammy. And using the same word in the menu and therefor every page seems spammy. The question is do we need to do this on the new site? In my opinion no. We have the links under a section for installation. Is that enough or should we use installation in every menu item? 6JcZwiU krbzxqx
On-Page Optimization | | BbeS0 -
How to check code to text ratio of Mobile Site?
Hello All, How to check code to text ratio of Mobile Site? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | adamjack0 -
Wordpress photo blog with sparse text - noindex posts, index categories?
Hi everyone, I have a wordpress blog that is heavy on photos but short on text - most of my posts consist of a photo linking to a full gallery, and a short description of 1-4 sentences. I've often read recommendations to noindex category pages, but in this case I'm wondering if it might be best to noindex the individual posts instead - I'm concerned that the short posts might seem like thin content to Google compared to the category pages which aggregate the posts. Also, some of my categories reflect keywords that I'd like to rank well for. I have about a dozen categories and close to 1000 posts.
On-Page Optimization | | matt_b0 -
Anchor text in Ecommerce site without relevant pages
I'm posting articles to my e-commerce site and just wondering about the anchor text links within the posts. I don't have relevant static pages but the items do come up in a search query. For example i don't have a specific page for red wine but if a user searched for red wine it would give a search query URL. Should I use that search URL query as my anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | acs1110 -
Should I use bold for the first few sentences of a text?
I would like to know if anyone knew if the relevance of a page changes if I bold the first few sentences. Our journalist wants to bold the first few sentences in every article to make it easier to read, how does that affect SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | mtueckcr0 -
Does link text "more information" have more weight than a normal link?
Does the anchor text "more information" hold any additional weight than any other anchor text? My suspicion is no, but just wanted to confirm.
On-Page Optimization | | nicole.healthline0 -
Does a scrolling text area carry juice?
I'm seeing a lot of companies in my industry loading the homepage with text by using a scrolling text area. Do the search engines see this as valid text or is it a cloaking method that carries less weight?
On-Page Optimization | | LabadieAuto0 -
Is there an SEO penalty for text that appears only in a pop-up box when you hover the mouse over an icon?
A client of mine wants to streamline the look of his web pages, taking some of the visible body copy and putting it into boxes that pop up when you hover the mouse over an icon. My understanding is that search engines will index this pop-up text. However, do they penalize pages that have text in pop-up boxes out of concern that those pages are spammy? In this case, the text and the page are perfectly legitimate e-commerce pages. Thanks for any insights you can offer.
On-Page Optimization | | jimmartin_zoho.com0