Internal linking
Links between pages on the same site, which control crawl paths, distribute link equity, and communicate topical relationships and page…
LinksLink text
Anchor text
The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, used by search engines as a description of the destination page.
In full
Anchor text is one of the oldest relevance signals and still informs what a linked page is about, both externally and internally. Over-optimised exact-match anchors at scale are a classic link spam signature, which is why natural profiles are dominated by brand, URL and descriptive phrases. Internally, anchor text is fully under your control and is one of the cheapest relevance levers available — 'click here' wastes it.
Example
Changing internal anchors from 'learn more' to 'commercial lease break clauses' clarifies the target page's topic for crawlers.
Related terms
Backlink
A hyperlink from one website to another, historically the strongest external signal search engines use to judge a page's importance and…
Link spam
Google's spam policy category covering links intended to manipulate rankings: buying or selling links, excessive exchanges, automated link…
Link equity
The ranking value passed through a hyperlink, influenced by the linking page's own authority, its relevance, its number of outbound links…
Web accessibility (WCAG)
Designing and building so people with disabilities can use a site, guided by the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Where to read more
- The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine · Landmark Post · infolab.stanford.edu
- US 7,346,839 — Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data · Patent · freepatentsonline.com
- US 7,716,225 — Ranking Documents Based on User Behavior and/or Feature Data · Patent · freepatentsonline.com