When optimising a website around a set list of keywords it’s easy to over-use the terms you’re focusing on, particularly if you’re new to SEO. The menu items become keyword focused, the footer links and in-content links become keyword focused and it can easily start to look a little obvious to the search engines what you are trying to do and can easily work against you over time. Not to mention the fact that this kind of over-optimisation can start to affect how the users navigate the site. So, what’s a better way to do it?
We’ve listed a few points below to help in your anchor text optimisation:
- Keep things natural. It isn’t natural to have all links pointing to one page using the same anchor text. This should be varied and flow with the surrounding content where possible. To help with varying the anchor text to that page try incorporating plurals or variations of each particular keyword.
- Have your main menu system focus on your core terms, with the anchor text of in-text and footer links touching on more specific keyword terms. This way your are emphasising the most important keywords while also optimising for the less generic and more focused terms.
- Add links to your content using descriptive words or phrases. Rather than ‘for more on anchor text optimisation click here’, using something like ‘for more on anchor text optimisation click here’ will not only help in your SEO efforts but will also give the users an idea of what to expect on the page if they click the link – again helping your users in navigating your website.
- Include descriptive keyword phrases within your external links also. This will not only help your users in deciding whether to click a link or not (as with your internal links) but will also help you include keywords in important areas of your page.
All in all, the key is to focus on your users and not the search engines. It’s alright getting high amounts of traffic by optimising for the search engines, but if the site isn’t easy to navigate and doesn’t reach out to humans they aren’t likely to stick around too long – and that’s potentially one less enquiry.
The key is to optimising anchor text links for usability. A user-friendly website interlinked well is more likely to rank better as it shows you are putting in the effort into creating a site that is easy to navigate and has your users’ experience as a priority – something Google loves to see.
Have you got anything else to add to the list when it comes to optimising anchor text links? Comments below are welcome.
