Internal Anchor Text (Your SEO Low-Hanging-Fruit Opportunity)

When it comes to SEO, prioritize what you can control. Your site's internal anchor text is something you can control, so invest time into optimizing it!

We know that internal links are important for SEO because they let Google crawl all the site’s links and each page is evaluated based on how heavily it is interlinked.

But there’s one more aspect of internal links to keep in mind: their anchor text.

1. Internal Anchor Text Does Matter for SEO

This has been stated by Googlers: Anchor text is (and always has been) a strong ranking signal -  from the old video by Matt Cutts to a more recent video with John Mueller.

This recent video mentions two important points:

• Just like with external links’ anchor text, internal anchor text helps Google understand what the linked webpage is about

• The context around that link is secondary, the anchor/link text is a much stronger signal. This has been confirmed in another video from John.

The older video claims that when the same page is linked twice, the topmost anchor text is used to identify the linked page's relevancy. This is based on the original PageRank formula and this may have changed. Either way, it shows that Google has been paying a lot of attention to internal anchor text from day one.

2. Sitewide versus Contextual Anchor Text

There’s no clear confirmation from Google on how they weigh different links. But from different tests, patents, and tests, we can safely assume that all links are able to pass link equity differently.

And from the above statement - that Google also takes “the surrounding” text into account -  there’s a good reason to assume that contextual internal links (i.e. those are added inside articles) pass more ranking signals to the linked page.

3. Meaningful Internal Anchor Text Is Important

In those videos, John suggests making your anchor text “reasonable” without specifying or giving examples. What he may mean by that is that your link anchor text needs to be useful and meaningful for a reader.

Avoid exact-match anchor text if it doesn’t make sense. If there’s an action to take on that page, include your CTA in your anchor text. If it’s informational content, add “guide” or “resources”.

There cannot be strict guidelines here as your link text is your editorial decision. As long as it’s meaningful for both Google and human users, it is a good anchor text. Of course, keywords are important in the link text because they generate relevancy signals assigned to the linked page but don’t forget your site users too!

4. For Linked Images, Alt Text Is an Anchor Text

This is something SEOs have suspected for years but we finally got an official confirmation from Google's John Mueller during Google Hangout. When discussing linked images, John stated that for linked images, its alt text is used as an anchor text.

Using descriptive alt text is both an SEO and accessibility recommendation. Now we also know that linked image alt text is used by Google to identify the topic of the linked page. Linked image alt text must describe not only an image but the linked page as well.

Overall, anchor text should always be part of the website audit. Keeping your anchor text descriptive is important for user experience and SEO, so keep that in mind when structuring your site or interlinking your content.

Based on all the statements above, here are your SEO action items from today’s SEO digest:

Action items

• Review and optimize internal links:

  • Ensure that all pages within the site are appropriately interlinked.

  • Check for any broken internal links and fix them.

  • Tool: Screaming Frog is a good tool to use. For small and medium sites you can get away with the free version.

• When writing, editing and/or publishing new content, spend a lot of time adding internal links. While all links pass link equity, prioritize contextual internal links (those within the body of articles) as they might pass more ranking signals.

  • Make sure the anchor text is descriptive and relevant to the content of the linked page.

  • Avoid over-optimization of exact-match anchor text if it doesn't provide value to the reader.

  • Consider including CTAs in anchor text for actionable content.

  • For informational content, consider using terms like “guide” or “resources” within the anchor text.

  • Keep keywords in mind but prioritize user understanding.

  • Tool: Yoast Premium suggests relevant links as you write your article.

• Optimize images with links:

  • Ensure all linked images have appropriate and descriptive alt text.

  • The alt text should describe both the image and the content/topic of the linked page.

• Educate the content team:

  • Ensure that everyone involved in content creation understands the importance of meaningful and relevant internal anchor text for SEO and user experience.

  • Include internal anchor text in your writing guidelines if you regularly publish content from peers or third-party bloggers.

  • Tool: Use my blogging checklist as the foundation to create yours!

Tools of the week:

• Content at Scale - This tool writes your content for you! I only gave this tool a couple of runs but I must say I loved the results! While I’d never put my name on auto-generated content, I can see using it for niche sites I have as a hobby! It adds headings, click-to-tweet highlights, notes, and action items. Supposedly, you will get some free credits if you use this link. Let me know if you give it a try!

• URL extractor online - FREE TOOL! This scans any web page and creates a downloadable spreadsheet of all URLs included on the page + link anchor text for each. So simple but so powerful! I am using this tool to quickly evaluate on-page anchor text usage, audit link neighborhood or find broken links (especially when I am reviewing HTML sitemaps)

Must-reads for this week:

• How to Get Sponsors and Partners Who Love You - Write Mix for Business: Let this inspire you to find brands to collaborate with! I certainly need that motivation!

• Quality Affects Everything In Google's Search Systems But What About Large Old Sites - Keep a close eye on what Googlers are saying about quality! Gary Illyes talks about prioritizing crawling based on the perceived quality of each page on the site (mainly based on the links).

Please comment to suggest what should be covered in my next week’s digest!