Anchor Text

Question

[aggie12thman]

Can someone define anchor text for me?

[NeverHome]

<A HREF="http://www.site-or-page_lint-to.com/page.html">This is the Anchor Text</A>

[Filipe]

This confuses a lot of people. NeverHome answered the question, but let me explain it a bit further.

The <A> tag, used for hyperlinks, is called an ANCHOR tag.

You can use it to:
1. Link to another anchor on the page in which the <A> tag is located
2. Link to another page
3. Link to a specific anchor on another page

"Anchor text" is most commonly referred to as "Link text", and is the text that makes up the actual link itself on a web page.

[A_Web_Guy]

Fruitful anchor text may include statements to further emphasize the linked document such as the following:

name="Keyword Phrase"

onmouseover="window.status='Keyword Phrase'"

onmouseout="window.status='Keyword Phrase'"

href="keyword_phrase.htm"

Oftemtimes, I have found that SEs like to see anchor text in complete agreement with the content to which it links.

Mark

[g1smd]

>> <A HREF="http://www.site-or-page_link-to.com/page.html">This is the Anchor Text</A> <<

You can also get a small SEO boost by adding a title attribute to the link. On modern browsers this text also apears as a little pop-up box, when you mouseover the link text:

<a href="http://www.site-or-page_link-to.com/page.html" title="some interesting words here">This is the Anchor Text</a>