Set anchor tags: Here’s how to do it right!

Using anchor tags correctly improves the usability of your website and helps you to be found more easily. However, there are some factors to consider. In this article, we explain what makes a good anchor tag and give you exclusive tips on how to give your anchor texts the right polish!

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What to expect:

• What is an anchor tag?
• How is an anchor tag structured?
• What anchor texts are there?
• Why are anchor tags so important?
• 6 tips how to set anchor tags correctly!

What is an anchor tag?

An anchor tag is actually just a simple HTML tag. It is the part of a text that you can click on to go to a new page. If this page is on your domain, then we are talking about internal links. If the link points to a foreign domain, it is an external link.
Links that point from external pages to ours are called backlinks.

If you would always write the respective URL as a link in a text (e.g. https://www.mydomain.com/directory-1/directory-2), this could disturb the reading flow of your users. Instead, you should ideally place the desired link on one or more words. You can often recognize the anchor tag by the fact that the word is highlighted in blue. As soon as you click on the word or the group of words, the page will open. Ideally, backlinks open in a new tab, so as not to lead users away from the page altogether.

How is an anchor tag structured?

Even if users only see the word, there is a structure behind it that leads to a new URL. An anchor tag is structured as follows:

<a href=“https://weventure.de/blog“>My blogarticle</a>

• The <a signals Google that the hyperlink starts here.
• The href stands for hypertext reference and shows Google that a link follows..
• This is followed by the link that opens as soon as you click on the word or group of words.
• This is followed by the word “My blog article“. This is the anchor text.
• It is important that the anchor tag closes again with an >a to signal to Google that the anchor tag has ended here.

To check the anchor tags of a website, the tool Screaming Frog SEO Spider is particularly suitable. By entering the URL, pages are crawled and you get information about anchor tags on the page. In our example, we crawled the WEVENTURE website and first we get the web page where the anchor tag is set. In the middle we find the page to which the text module links and on the right the text module itself is displayed.

Good to know!
An anchor text does not necessarily have to link to another page. It can also link to a document or a file. The only important thing here is that the target file has a unique target address.

What anchor tags are there?

Anchor tags can be divided into the following types:

• Money Anchor Text: This Anchor Tag is very easy to recognize thanks to its buying intention. An example of a Money Anchor text is “Buy iPhone 10”.
• Brand Anchor Text: Here the brand name is in the anchor text, as for example with “Apple.com”.
• Compound Anchor Text: This Anchor Tag is a link between the Brand Anchor and the Money Anchor. For example: “Buy iPhone 10 Apple.com”.
• Naked Anchor Text: A so-called naked anchor uses the URL as anchor text. These often interrupt the reading flow.
• Organic Anchor Text: These anchor texts can only be assigned to a category to a limited extent, because it is a specific word. For example: “Good backlinks are positive for the ranking”. Here you would find further information on another page under “Backlinks”. Organic Anchor texts also include texts like ” “Click here” or “Click here”. Why the latter should be avoided, however, you can find out in our tips.

Why are anchor tags so important?

In order to understand what makes anchor tags so special and how to use them well, it is important to know how Google crawls web pages. The Google bot works its way through the World Wide Web from link to link and captures the content of the page based on text.

Therefore, if you choose an informative anchor text, you signal to Google what the page behind the link is about. The keyword of the target page should therefore always match the anchor text.

At the same time, users should quickly become aware of what content is waiting for them on the linked page. So the more precisely the anchor text describes the content, the better you can meet the expectations of your users.. 

6 tips how to set anchor tags correctly!

1. Slay with content! Make sure that your anchor tag is thematically relevant to the page you are linking to. Don’t blindly link to other pages if they don’t add value to yours.
2. Let your anchor talk! Your anchor text should be meaningful. On the one hand, your users will then clearly know where they are being redirected to. On the other hand, terms like “Read more” and “Here” are meaningless for the Google crawler.
3. Mix it up! Try to have a good mix of your links. This means that you link to your own subpages as well as to external pages.
4. Don’t monetize everything! Money anchor tags are fine, but don’t use too many. Especially if your site is very content-heavy, it’s worth targeting a few money anchor tags rather than flooding the page with them.
5. Keep up with the big players! When setting external anchor tags, make sure that you link to pages with medium to high traffic topics. High traffic keywords help here. After all, you want to have as many interested parties as possible.
6. Place your keywords wisely! For each topic there are higher ranking keywords and lower ranking keywords that you can use as anchor tags. The trick is to place your higher ranking keywords at the beginning or in the first half of your text.

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Conclusion: How you set your anchor tags is entirely up to you. However, you can always make sure that the text or word in your anchor tag is meaningful. This way Google can better assess the content focus of your page and your users will not be disappointed when clicking on links. If you need support, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help you!