What is an anchor link? Anchor VS non-anchor links

Wandering around the Internet, we follow links every day, without particularly paying attention to their anchors. And why, the most important thing is that the link texts make it clear to us where they lead.

That's right, the average user should not think about the quality of the link he follows. But then search robots pay special attention to anchors and lately search engines have seriously taken up the fight against unnatural links.

Also, the robots’ algorithms are set up to fight spam links, lowering the search results or driving under filters those resources that abuse “incorrect” anchors.

I won’t get ahead of myself and will try to sort everything out.

What is an anchor list and how is link weight calculated?

Anchor ( a nchor, translated from English as anchor or binding)- this is the text of the link, or rather its text version, which visually replaces URL address.

You can hide anchor links for Yandex using the noindex tag or add the nofollow tag.

anchor links

Let me remind you that indicators such as WCI (weighted citation index) for Yandex and PegeRank for Google are calculated using static weight. There is also dynamic link weight.

Dynamic weight depends precisely on the anchor and is calculated based on the match of the link text with the user’s request (density), as well as with the keyword of the article to which it leads this link. It’s not clear, then let’s do it again, but more slowly.

I would like to note that I am mainly analyzing the Yandex search engine, since Google does not search by links, by at least, he doesn't demonstrate it. The same applies to near-reference text.

The near-link text can be located on the right and left side relative to the link itself or wrap around it on all sides. Yasha somehow cunningly takes these points into account.

An interesting study on anchor-free promotion was conducted by the famous webmaster Devaka on his blog. You can read about the results of the experiment here.

It's time to draw some conclusions from all of the above:

Conclusion No. 1. Anchors, no matter internal or external links, should be different.

Conclusion No. 4. Anchor and near-link text must provide brief information about the material that the user can find by following this link.

The topic of anchors is very hotly discussed on various seo forums. Search engines also do not stand still and with each update they present optimizers with new food for thought.

That's all I have for today. How do you like the article?

Sincerely, Vitaly Kirillov

From SEOs you can often hear all sorts of crap about anchors, anchor links, “anchor-free” and other similar words. They usually growl, growl, purr, and try to show that they know exactly how to buy links and work with them correctly, while everyone else knows nothing. I myself believe that for promotion it is much more effective to focus on something else, but if you want your link promotion to give you an advantage of not 2.31%, but 2.38%, then let me tell you how get the most out of your anchor list.

What is anchor

Google filters

On the page the anchor looks like this - . The text part of the link is taken into account search engines and affects the ranking of positions in search results. Based on this, anchor texts are given great value in the SEO field.

What is the difference between an anchor link and a non-anchor link?

An anchor link includes text that is related to the topic of the article, product, brand or resource as a whole. Typically, an anchor link contains a key query, as this is the easiest and surest way to attract users and increase the trust of search engines. Often the anchor is diluted with other words or divided into several sentences.

Why do you need to know how to write anchors?

The fact is that previously links with the correct anchors gave (especially in Google) a huge plus for page promotion. At one time, you could buy 50 links with the anchor “buy a mattress” in order to be in the top 3 for the request [buy a mattress]. Now search engine algorithms have improved. They determine where the link is purchased and where it is natural.

What is an anchor list

An anchor list is a list of links with anchors that contain key queries with different types occurrences. Links are placed on donor sites to build up the link mass for the purpose of external promotion of the resource.

How to write anchors correctly

There are methods for writing anchors correctly that will help optimizers avoid problems with sanctions from Google and Yandex, save budget and increase site traffic. Here are the most basic recommendations for writing anchors:

Keywords— presence of a key query in the anchor. Example:
[buy a TV],
[order pizza].

It is advisable to indicate the company name only for brand promotion. In all other cases, we need keys that users enter into search engines.
Anchors with key queries necessary dilute in other words, to add naturalness. As a result, you will get variety in your anchor list and will not fall under the PS filter.
The most simple option Dilution is done by adding less frequent words from Wordstat to the anchor. You shouldn’t get carried away, since the anchor length is usually limited to 100 characters.
Actively use dilution occurrences, that is, declinations, changes in number and gender.
The same Yandex has in its morphological database all kinds of variants of the word “buy”, which will work in links to basic queries.
Synonymization— to diversify the anchor list, you can and should use synonymous words, as well as abbreviations or familiar abbreviations.
Using word variants with typos can also attract additional traffic. This is especially true for foreign words and words with double letters (torrent - torrent, Volkswagen - Volkswagen).
Reverse entry - you can rearrange words, but without leading to absurdity.
Try not to use punctuation marks. From experience working with Yandex, the following fact is known: if there is a period, exclamation or question marks, a colon and a subsequent word with capital letter the request is divided into two parts. In this case, the search engine will only take into account the first one.
In the anchor “buy a Samsung TV. Delivery within the city” will not take into account the component “delivery within the city”. If the optimizer swaps parts, then such an anchor will be of no use at all.
Weight distribution - each word in the anchor has a certain weight for the PS. There is no need to enter unnecessary words into the anchor that can pull the weight onto themselves, thereby draining the essence of the request.
Translation - if your site is not only in Russian, but also English, it is advisable to translate anchors.
Natural - a link with an anchor “here” or “here”, that is, without an anchor, which is also useful for dilution.

How to write near-link text

The adjacent text must also be written in compliance with certain rules that will help in promoting site pages:

using relevant words on the topic, synonyms and words from key phrases that need to be promoted;
drawing up a stylistically correct sentence that will be read correctly;
the beginning is with a capital letter, the end is a punctuation mark to break the passage.

Anchor generators

Anchor generators are online services that support word alternation. Thus, the script generates separate anchors for each spelling option. It is useful to highlight those services that support not only word alternation, but also permutation. By using different templates you can get a wide variety of anchors in one go. The SeoGenerator service is an example of a site where you can generate anchors with a maximum of spelling options.

The pattern ( | ) means a variable choice of words and phrases in sentences, and the pattern [+,+ | ] involves alternating words that will be separated by a comma. Naturally, instead of a comma, you can put another sign, for example a dash. Among similar services, I would like to mention MainSpy, which differs only in its interface. It is divided into windows through which you can preview the result of creating the template.

How to create an anchor list

So, you need to create an anchor list to promote the pages of your resource. The question arises: what aspects are worth paying attention to. I will highlight the basic rules by which you can create a high-quality anchor list:

Determination of the most important pages resources that you think should be in the TOP.
Selecting multiple queries from semantic core to the page.
Avoid repetition of anchors, dilute the anchor list as much as possible.
Take into account the relevance of the page for the correct distribution of queries.
The number of links depends on the level of competition - for one topic it is enough to add a few external links, for another hundred it will not be enough. It is necessary to analyze the anchor lists of competing resources.
For an anchor list, the main thing is naturalness, since everything else depends on it.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Today I want to talk about such a thing as the anchor of a link, which, in its essence, is nothing more than just its text, i.e. what stands between .

Anchor, for all its technical simplicity, causes huge amount questions and disputes among optimizers, because it is the link texts that are the subject of the so-called link (anchor) ranking in search engines.

I can't lean on own experience in this matter, because for this you need to have extensive experience in promoting a significant number of sites or a number of experiments carried out on this topic. I have neither one nor the other, therefore, when talking about anchors, I will rely on the opinion of a number of experts who are considered authoritative specialists in this topic (link ranking).

In general, the prerequisite for writing this note was that I almost simultaneously came across several publications by specialists who were authoritative in the field of website promotion, and all of these materials, to one degree or another, related to anchors. But let's talk about everything in order, and first give a clear definition of this term.

What is an anchor and what are they?

Anchor in SEO means a very banal thing - link text. As you remember, to create a hyperlink, in HTML language a special one is used, which specifies the page or other type of document to which this hyperlink will lead.

In the example given, the anchor is the phrase “Promotion and promotion.”

Promotion and promotion

This text is taken into account by search engines when your site is the one for which you want to move to the Top of the results. This type of ranking is also called link ranking.

At all, internal linking with the necessary anchors can serve two things at once:

Redistribution of static weight (pagerank, vits) between the pages of your site in such a way as to focus it specifically on the documents being promoted. There are ones that allow you to upgrade both home page, and directly pages with articles. As a result, the greater the static weight of a page, the higher it will be ranked by search engines, all other things being equal.
Internal linking allows you to link to the promoted pages of your site with the necessary anchors (build up dynamic weight). Those. you can bet from ten internal pages your resource link to the promoted one and use a direct entry of the key or diluted text as an anchor, which will also be taken into account in positive side search engines when ranking.

Personally, I don’t use linking schemes (I’m just not up to it) and stupidly insert internal links into the texts of articles as they are written and the appropriateness of these anchors in the text.

True, there is one nuance in taking into account the anchors of internal links placed on the same page of your resource. Let's say that I need to refer to the same material several times in the course of presenting the material in the article. Each time I will insert a hyperlink with different text. Question: How will the anchors of these links be taken into account by Yandex and Google?

It’s impossible to say unequivocally about Yandex, because the inclusion of these anchors may depend on a number of external factors, but Google will only consider the text first hyperlinks he encountered in the text. This has been proven by a number of experiments (not mine, of course) and can be considered an established fact. But there is a fairly simple way to get around this limitation.

What’s remarkable is that I’ve been using this method since the very beginning of this blog, without even knowing about the existence of limited tracking of anchors in Google. But just recently I read an article by the respected Alexander Lustik entitled Testing the first link priority rule and realized that you don’t have to limit yourself.

In general, if you want to link several times from the same article on your site to another article and at the same time want Google to take into account the anchors of all of them, then simply use the hash sign “#” in them, with the help of which the so-called hashes are created links (this lattice is called a hash). Probably, you don’t even need to create anchors on the acceptor page specifically for this purpose.

(which, by a strange coincidence, is also called anchor), I have already described in some detail, and you can familiarize yourself with this material using the footnote provided, which is precisely an example of a link hash:

Text

You see, at the end of the Url address the construction “#giperssylka-1” has been added, which will allow Google to take into account all the anchors that were used in the hyperlinks from this article to the article about the intricacies of creating links in Html.

Previously, I also actively used hashlinks, but without even knowing the benefits this method to take into account all the anchors, I inserted them simply for the convenience of readers - the movement is carried out immediately to the place in the text where what is indicated in the link text is described. True, for this it was necessary to place anchors in the acceptor articles, which takes time for the author of the article, but saves time for the readers.

Anchor sheets - what they should be

Well, now I want to mention another authoritative source from which I learned a lot of useful information about how anchors are taken into account by search engines - a video interview with Stanislav Stavsky, which is posted at the end of this article (Anchor ranking algorithms).

In general, Stanislav is certainly a very smart and competent comrade (who once worked or is related to the Yandex team and still maintains connections there), I especially like his manner of clearly formulating his thoughts, as if putting everything into order.

He shares, of course, not all the information he has about the influence and schemes for building an anchor list, but the information is still useful and, very importantly, relevant. Very often you come across materials online that have already lost their relevance due to the dynamic development of search ranking mechanisms. Everything flows, everything changes, and in search this happens especially quickly.

So, in short, what did I manage to understand from the interview with this “guru” of website promotion and promotion?

Well, first of all, I liked the way he used to clearly demonstrate the influence behavioral factors for link ranking. There, an example was considered when a site got to the Top of search results only due to the words in its anchor list (found through the link - NPS). Moreover, in the case of artificial exclusion of the influence of behavioral factors, the resource immediately moved from first place to oblivion. Very significant, however.
Stanislav explained quite interestingly general principles ranking by anchor list, comparing it with the usual ranking of article texts, but taking into account its own peculiarities of taking into account words. Those. The anchor list is actually attached to the text of the article and relevance is calculated from it, taking into account correction factors.
To the question “what an ideal anchor list could look like,” Stanislav answered quite comprehensively (although perhaps not in such detail), mentioning the greatest influence of options with direct entry and pointing to the results of his experiment. He also mentioned gluing and the fact that this actually leads to a decrease in the static weight they transmit.
I found the discussion of a natural anchor list quite interesting using the example of Yandex Market, which by definition should have only natural phrases in backlinks, and the consideration of near-link text by search engines.
In their conversation they also touched upon the principles of determining Yandex SEO links by their anchors and topics of acceptor sites, and, notably, it was concluded that they, in fact, differ from others (those that Yandex did not consider purchased) only in that start working much later. For example, backlinks without an anchor are taken into account in search rankings within a few weeks after indexing, and SEO links only after a few months.
If you buy end-to-end link or you are putting it down from another project of yours, then it is better to make different anchors for this “draft” with different pages resource.
The link needs to be built up smoothly.
There is a dilemma - whether to use the same anchors with maximum key density and get a reduction in the transmitted static weight due to gluing, or still use diluted options.
Link mass should be varied - with anchors, without anchors, from blogs, forums, etc.
Enough interesting example using a thematic information satellite site to promote an online store
Overspam of an anchor list may result in a filter being applied by search engines, i.e. purchasing many links with the same text can be quite fraught with unpleasant consequences.
If needed fast promotion here and now, then focus on purchasing links, and if you want to ensure the stable existence of the project in the foreseeable future, then develop the project, add content, improve behavior, and buy backlinks, but without fanaticism.
Mass exchange of links is the main way to promote sites in the burzhunet, and in our country Yandex punishes for this due to spamming of this method by linkers.
Are the received backlinks in a tag taken into account when ranking by search engines? Static weight most likely is not transferred (pagerank and rank are not increased), but anchor ranking may take place. Oh how.
Does static weight leak from external hyperlinks from the site? Should I close them in rel nofollow? The question is, of course, an interesting one.
Proportions in the anchor list of exact, diluted occurrences and non-anchor variants. Eternal question.

Well, for starters, a video from where you can hear the opinion of a famous guru SEO promotion bourgeoisie (a certain Rand Fishkin) regarding anchors:

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

You can watch more videos by going to

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Profession

Before we understand anchor, what it is and what it is for, it is important to briefly talk about SEO.

Bill Gates once said: “If your business is not on the Internet, then you are not in business.” All this has led to the fact that now a person does not need to leave home to order a gift for New Year, dinner delivery and necessary goods.

Everything is sold on the Internet: services, products, equipment, souvenirs and much more. This is where crazy competition arose. Business owners had to independently understand different concepts like “targeting,” “optimization,” or “anchor.” What it was was not clear to everyone, so there was a need for professionals in this field.

SEO is search engine optimization. It includes a set of works to promote a website on the Internet. The specialist is engaged in bringing the desired resource to the top of search results. This increases confidence in him. All this leads to attraction target audience and increasing sales.

Education

It just so happened that the specialty of “SEO specialist” has become fashionable and in demand. Those who delved into this topic on their own 10 years ago are now teaching hundreds of people. Because in universities similar specialty not yet, everyone is looking for knowledge on the Internet and in courses. This is where they tell you what an anchor is. This is the best on at the moment option to become a SEO specialist.

Anchor

Now let's move directly to the term itself. Those who know English have already guessed that the word translates as “anchor” or “binding.” In our case, the link text becomes such an “anchor”.

If you are familiar with HTML, then you understand that we are talking about the text between the tags " " And "" It is known that all pages and sites are linked by links. This is a kind of text “station” that allows the reader to travel from one topic to another. You must use the “href” attribute between link tags.

For example, we have a standard link construction: " link text"(without quotes). So, “link text” is an anchor.

Meaning

Knowing what an anchor is and the definition of the term, it is important to understand its purpose. Every SEO specialist will tell you that this “anchor” is used to promote the site. It influences the formation of the special status of the resource. This happens due to the relevance of the keywords that the specialist has anchored.

This whole system affects What does this concept mean? Ranking is the influence of some factors on the order relative to rank. For example, for a resource position in search results may influence the authority, respectability, relevance of the site. As a result, the entire process that the site went through before taking this or that place in the search results is ranking.

Anchor has a slightly different effect on determining order. For example, in a search you may come across a snippet that will indicate that the site was “Found by link”. In this case, the request itself may be irrelevant to what you asked. So why did this particular site appear in the search results?

In this process, it was link ranking that worked, which turned out to be relevant to the user’s query. Using correctly composed anchors, you can get to the top of the system for irrelevant (not relevant) queries. This, in turn, can attract traffic. Although not always of high quality.

Species

Now it’s important to understand what types of anchors there are. They can be divided into several types and subspecies. For example, in terms of content, anchors can be diluted or undiluted. The first option implies that the link text contains not only a pure key, but also additional words. But undiluted - not only contains the main key, but is also characterized by its direct (literal) occurrence.

HF refers to such queries that are most often encountered by users. There is also an opinion that high-frequency queries do not include commercial queries, that is, those that contain words like “buy”. HF sometimes includes ordinary information requests like “what is an anchor”.

Mid-frequency ones can consist of 2-4 words and have some clarification. For example, if the HF can be “buy a door,” then the MF will be “buy a door in Moscow.” That is, we have before us a conditionally diluted anchor.

Accordingly, LF are the most rarely encountered queries with a large number words For example, when a user is looking not just for a door in Moscow, but also for a specific manufacturer (or desired color, shape, material, and perhaps even model).

Writing

Anchor is the link text, which means you need the help of a professional copywriter. Firstly, if there are errors, then such anchors will not be accepted on authoritative sites. Secondly, illiterate text can negatively affect the link weight of the project. Thirdly, when writing it is important to take into account some requirements:

uniqueness;
readability;
quantity;
relevance;
literacy;
repetitions.

Now the question of a unique text has become especially acute. This is repeated and talked about all the time. Search engines have begun to adapt to articles written for people, not machines. Therefore, uniqueness in anchors is also important.

Readability is conditionally related to the previous requirement. In addition to being unique, the content should be easy and understandable to read.

Again, it is important to pay attention to the literacy of the written text, as well as repetition. Often, optimizers combine queries into one anchor. This may entail moving the resource to the blacklist.

Compilation

Another important component of promotion is the formation of an anchor list. This is a list of links that is represented by different keyword queries indicating the desired types of occurrence. It is posted on donor sites. An anchor list increases your link mass.

Conclusion

There is a lot to be said about anchors. This is a promotion detail that courses always devote a lot of time to. An incorrect understanding of the work and influence of anchors can lead to a decrease in the site’s rankings and other troubles. Therefore, it is important to understand the topic “Reference Mass” carefully and slowly.

Warm greetings to all readers of my blog! Today's post will be devoted to answering the question, what is anchor links what types of anchors are there and how they affect link ranking sites by search engines.

First of all, I want to remind you that even seemingly insignificant things can have a serious impact on website promotion, say, if you spend a little time and. What can we say about the meaning of the anchor! It must be said that anchor links, despite their simple structure, give rise to a huge amount of controversy among webmasters and optimizers, since they have a significant impact on the actions of search engines in the link ranking mentioned above.

What is link ranking

In the general case (correspondences specific request) document. That is, the greater the relevance of a particular website page, the higher the position it occupies in search results. In other words, the top search results consist of pages that are most relevant to a specific query that the user enters into the search field.

In relation to link (or anchor) ranking, we can say that the more a resource page corresponds to an anchor (containing keywords, through which you are promoting a web page) links that lead from another web page of your project or from third party resource, the more relevant it will look in the eyes of search engines.

This is quite natural, since it is beneficial for Yandex and Google that users receive the information they are looking for. Readers for a blog or website are the main wealth, so first of all you need to respect their interests. What I mean is that, if necessary, you should not forget to put links to external resources, where you can learn something useful.

And in order to regulate the distribution of page weight, links or text fragments can be blocked from indexing by search engines. Besides, proper use anchors will give you a significant advantage over a certain competitor, which you will use when promoting a particular page of the project.

Anchors and their types for link ranking

In this example, the anchor will be: Link text (anchor). In accordance with the definition of link ranking, the keywords that are part of the text will be taken into account by the Yandex and Google search engines when determining compliance (relevance) to the query that users enter into the search field. Thus, link ranking plays a very important role important role as part seo optimization site.

First, we will consider the situation when links lead from third-party sites to the promoted page of your resource for certain search queries. All link anchors that are placed on your article are taken into account by search engines as an addition to the text of the post. This article may participate in Yandex search or Google, even if it does not contain the words that are part of this search query, but the anchor of the link contains this phrase or words. Very often you can see, for example, in a Yandex search, the following picture:

This is the result of link ranking. Based on their content, all possible links with anchors can be divided into 3 types:

1. Links containing anchors with exact occurrences of keywords. In no case should you overdo them, because you can get caught in the search engine filter for link spam. It is believed that this type should make up about 1/3 of all link anchors. In this case, links with the same texts may be subject to "gluing", that is, all these links will be considered as one (of course large number links with the same anchor will not be merged into one; a certain coefficient is used here). As a result, you will not receive a large share of the “weight” transferred to the promoted article.

2. Hyperlinks with diluted anchors. To the CS on which this web page is promoted, you can add some definitions that will characterize them. For example, if you are promoting any project page for the request “Platinum plugin SEO Pack”, then you can add a certain amount to this key phrase additional words, in this case the anchor will take the following form: “wonderful Platinum Seo Pack plugin for wordpress.”

3. Unanchored links. They are considered as such if the anchor does not include key phrases or words, for example, the text contains the URL address of the acceptor (the web page to which the link leads) necessarily with "http://":

http://site

Or words like: here, here, etc. are used:

Here

These links do not contain text with key phrases, they are the most natural from the point of view of Yandex and Google, so they will always act and transmit “weight” as VIC values and Google PageRank site (), however, such links will not take part in link ranking, since they do not have text consisting of words relevant to the search query.

Algorithm for calculating wCI (weighted citation index) for separate page is kept deeply secret by Yandex, so by default you can take it close to Google, since the ranking principles of both giants, if not identical, are very close. This situation exists in theory. But we are primarily interested in the practical side of the matter. So, in practice, everything looks a little different, towards a more optimistic outcome, which involves participation in the link ranking of non-anchor links.

This happens when we surround non-anchor links with well-written peri-link text. In this case, there is a high probability that search engines will take into account part of the near-link text (certain keywords) as an anchor. Well, for example:

You can view Picasso's paintings here with a pass to our gallery.

Where search query is "Gallery of Picasso's paintings", which is part of the near-reference text. But it is only possible to foresee how Yandex or Google will behave in one case or another during link ranking.

Until the end of a firm conviction about how to position the near-link text (to the right or left of the link, for example) to achieve the most optimal result, I have no. All this is achieved through experimental testing over a long period of time, while I have not yet been closely involved in this, but I plan to, I will certainly report on the results.

Now a little about how link ranking is taken into account when using internal. In this case, you can regulate the number of links leading to the promoted article from other web pages of the resource and put various types anchor links described above. Thus, we kill two birds with one stone: firstly, the task of transferring “weight” to the target acceptor page (to which the link leads) is achieved; secondly, the same web page is taken into account in the link ranking.

There are many topics of internal linking, which I will not describe yet, because I simply physically do not have enough time for this. I just try to add anchor links from newly written posts to old ones and vice versa. I think that such linking can also bring certain benefits.

In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to one more nuance, namely, participation in internal linking created using name attribute. The fact is that if two or more links from the same post are placed on the same page (sometimes this is necessary for the convenience of readers), then Google, for example, only takes into account the first of them, ignoring the rest, and this is very unprofitable webmasters. It is not known for certain how Yandex behaves in this case, although I suspect it is similar.

If you enter the # icon in the link address of the acceptor page, then the page will open in different places, which is extremely convenient for visitors. I had an idea whether the application would have a positive effect on how these links were taken into account by search engines. Having spent a little time clarifying this situation, I came to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of optimizers are inclined to think that such hyperlinks are actually taken into account by Google separately on an equal basis with regular links, which is very important for project optimization.

Thus, I tried to outline everything I know about link anchors and types of anchors, as well as their impact on the link ranking of sites by search engines. Therefore, let me take my leave, do not forget to subscribe to blog updates and use the buttons social networks, if, of course, you found the article informative.