Internal link text
-
Hi
With internal links, should I make sure to always use the same anchor text im trying to rank the page for?
For example im having a tidy up and have realised im linking to the same page in multiple blog posts using different anchor text.
Whats the rule of thumb here?
Thanks
Chris
-
Exactly, it depends as per the content & structure of the page and website. Make it sure, whatever you are doing should be for humans not search engines. Best practice is, you can use combinations of anchor texts, like exact keywords as anchor texts + long phrases having your targeted keyword.
-
It really depends what you are trying to accomplish, and there are two ways to look at it.
The first way to view it would be, yes, technically speaking you want the search engine to see what page you are about to send the user to. I would imagine your anchor text matches the URL and keywords used on the page?
Second, depending upon how your site is structured, the audience will react different ways to visiting the links. If you are referencing a subject matter, I would use a more general form of anchor text. EXAMPLE: "You can view the FULL ARTICLE here" The "full article" text being the link to your other page. If it is in the nature of navigation, I would use exact match text to the page URL or title, because its clear to the user what is about to happen. Promoting interaction on your site and increasing on page time by intriguing your users can also have a positive effect on traffic. Remember, build your site around users, not search engines. Use whatever method allows users to navigate your site the easiest.
-
Hey Chris,
I saw this Q&A post a while ago that addresses this issue. Peter answers it quite well here: http://moz.com/community/q/internal-linking-anchor-text
Hope this helps!
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 -
Product Page Links
I have a product category page at https://www.hurtlegear.com.au/s1000rr/ which currently has 38 products on it. Problem is, all the product titles start with the name of the text: "bmw s1000rr" (because that's what they are) - so that means there are 38 anchored internal links on that page, all starting with the same keyword. You can see how that might look to the Google crawler. Recently that page dropped from around 15 to outside the top 100, and Moz tells me that the page is keyword stuffed with "bmw s1000rr" (no suprise) so I'm guessing that may be the reason the page has disappeared out of the SERPs. I don't really want to change all the product titles (then they wouldn't make sense) so I'm just wondering if there is any way around this? Is there some way of telling Google that this is a product category page and therefore to ignore the anchor text in all of those product links? Can/should the links have some kind of markup on them? Or is the page beyond help? Basically I'm looking at a way of keeping the product titles as they are, but avoiding a page penalty from Google somehow. I'm a bit of a newbie, any suggestions would be most appreciated. Cheers, Graeme
On-Page Optimization | | graeme720 -
Internal links are not indexed of the website
Some internal links are indexed and some not of the same page of the website, what is the so and what is the reason behind?
On-Page Optimization | | renukishor10 -
Use External Links
Hey 🙂 I noticed when analysing my pages that Moz gives the following advice about adding external links to my articles; "On any page specifically targeting a keyword, link externally to at least one (and possibly more than one) relevant, trusted resources as a best practice." As a small business I work pretty damn hard to get visitors to my website, so why on earth would I want to go to all that trouble just to send them away again to a trusted resouce? Secondly, what exactly is a "trusted resource"? Can I simply use search and use the top competitor, for example Moz or Wikipedia and does the anchor need to be an exact match or will a partial suffice. I say this because I already have the top spot for my longtail, so an exact match would be pointless. And lastly, I notice that pretty much all quality sites use external links to open in the same window i.e. not target=_blank, I never thought of it before today, but now that I'm considering using external linking in my articles I guess it's important to know the answer - i.e. Is this a best practice and does this give any seo benefit? Cheers, Lee :)
On-Page Optimization | | LeeC0 -
Link Structure
On my site I have a dropdown menu going across the page at the top to all of my categories on each page, I also have a similar structure going down the side going to the same categories, is this acceptable or would Google count this as double the internal links?
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Do anchor links pointing to bottom/top of page count as link?
As the title says: Do anchor links pointing to bottom/top of page count as link? This page: http://www.betxpert.com/forum/bookmakere/vis/ladbrokes-kommentar I has over 300 links, but I don't see that many links. Is it the "#15" and the top/bottom of page anchors that count? Is this harmful in terms of link juice? -Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0 -
Does a www.domain.com/# count as a link?
Hi I thinking about consolidation some info from 5 pages onto 1 by using the hashtag at the end of the link to send people to the rigt section of the page. Does each link to the www.domain.com/# count as link so that I wont really gain any linkvalue by doing it?
On-Page Optimization | | home1110 -
Google indexing Internal Search Results
Greeting, Currently I have noticed that Google is starting to index our internal search page results. Should I block those pages in our robot txt file or have you ever heard of any websites that actually gained traffic or rank by letting Google index those pages? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Tonyd230