Internal Anchor Text Links
-
Hi
How important are internal anchor text links & rankings?
I'm researching competitors and am seeing a lot of internal anchor text links with keywords helping them rank - but they have these links in their menu which at the moment isn't possible for us.
We can include our top level 1 categories, but nothing below this in the top navigation
Thanks!
-
This might be a whole new thread, but how does an internal link work if you are linking to a page that is already in the main menu of the page you are linking from. A top level product page for example. Is it worth creating anchor text links if they will be the second link discovered by the spiders?
-
Hello,
With anything SEO there is the chance of appearing spammy. Keeping in mind the user, does this link with anchor text makes sense to the user? Does it accurately describe what the user will find on the linked page?
Be aware that you should always design your website with the user in mind.
-
Hey
Sure i know you need some anchor text, but is there a limit? Will it be spammy if there's too much, or is it going to help rankings?
Thanks!
-
Hi Becky!
Internal anchor text is important because it gives web site visitors (and search engines) a hint about the web page or web site they are about to visit (if they click the link). This is why you DON’T want to use common calls to action like, “click here” or “our website.” Instead, you want to use keyword rich anchor text. But you don't want it to become very spammy sounding—so keep this in mind when creating content.
Anchor text helps search engines understand what the page is about and it also helps establish site architecture. And depending on the anchor text of the link, it might even increase your rankings for certain keywords!
As an example, if you’re having a contest to give away a free website makeover for the HVAC industry, make free HVAC website the anchor text! If thousands of web sites link to your site using the anchor text ‘leading residential furnace installers‘ there’s a good chance that you’re in the residential HVAC business and you install furnaces!
I hope this helped! But if you're looking for more information check out our blog that discusses if you need links to rank on Google.
-
Hi Becky,
Internal links help spread link juice (ranking power) around websites. Find detailed article on best practice @ https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
While internal linking is highly recommended, avoid doing it with keyword-rich anchor text. Using too many keyword-rich anchors can have a negative impact on your link profile. Try the healthy alternative of spreading the anchor across a sentence. For instance, instead of using “link building definition," you can go for something like “learn about the definition of link building." So, this ideally means that you create a long anchor and spread the keywords within. - SEOmoz excerpt
Thanks
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
-
Facet Values as Anchor text
Hi I've reviewing our internal linking structure & have found that the facets/filter buttons on a category, are crawled and have anchor text to each link, for example: The anchor text to filter the product listing results by those under £50 would be: | Facet Value Less than £50.00 (15) Less than £50.00 (15) | This also has the source URL & destination URL of http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lockers I haven't come across this before - is this an issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
I got message in my Google webmaster tool: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Does anyone knows the difference between "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" and "Unnatural links to your site" Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
First Link on Page Still Only Link on Page?
Bruce Clay and others did some research and found that the first link on the page is the most important and what is accredited as the link. Any other links on the page mean nothing. Is this still true? And in that case, on an ecommerce site with category links in the top navigation (which is high on the code), is it not useful to link to categories in the content of the page? Because the category is already linked to on that page. Thank you, Tyler
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Subdomain Metrics Links??
I have been analysing my companies website against our competitors and we beat them hands down on everything apart from the total links in the subdomain metrics. Our competitor jumped above us a couple of months ago to grab the number one spot for our industries most valuable keyword. They have had a new website designed and after looking at the source code and running it through SEO MOZ in comparison to our site I can't see how they have manged to do it. We beat them hands down on all factors apart from subdomain metrics > Total links where they have twice as many. When it comes to Page Specific Metrics and Root Domain Metrics we easily beat them on all factors. Does anyone have any ideas what I need to do to improve the subdomain metrics? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Detectamet0 -
Best internal linking structure?
We are considering implementing a site-wide contextual linking structure. Does anyone have some good guidelines / blog posts on this topic? Our site is quite (over 1 million pages), so the contextual linking would be automated, but we need to define a set of rules. Basically, if we have a great page on 'healthy recipes,' should we make every instance of the word 'healthy recipes' link back to that page, or should we limit it to a certain number of pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Dynamic Links vs Static Links
There are under 100 pages that we are trying to rank for and we'd like to flatten our site architecture to give them more link juice. One of the methods that is currently in place now is a widget that dynamically links to these pages based on page popularity...the list of links could change day to day. We are thinking of redesigning the page to become more static, as we believe it's better for link juice to flow to those pages reliably than dynamically. Before we do so, we need a second opinion.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RBA0 -
Multiple sites linking back with pornographic anchor text
I discovered a while ago that we had quite a number of links pointing back to one of our customer's websites. The anchor text of these links contain porn that is extremely bad. These links are originating from forums that seems to link between themselves and then throw my customers web address in there at the same time. Any thoughts on this? I'm seriously worried that this may negatively affect the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeMaven0 -
Multiple anchor text links
Hi. I wanted to ask about having multiple text links to an internal page from the same page. So I have a section title on my home page which will vary with each article. It may say "Healthiest Cat Foods" as the title then offer a snippet and finally offer a "continue reading..." anchor text. The title is a great link to the article while the "continue reading..." is another link to the same article. I like the to keep the title link because it is perfect anchor text. I like to keep the "continue reading..." because it seems helpful for users. I have read that search engines will only count the first link to an article which is fine as I only want the first one to count anyway. What I am wondering is do I lose any page rank because I added the second link? Does that second link hurt me in any way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikkiGaul0