Ask any Search Engine Marketing Expert and they’ll tell you the importance of anchor text. So what is it? It’s the hyperlinked text that you click on to follow a link. Most people overlook this text, using words like “click here” or other nebulous terms. But if used correctly, anchor text can help with your site ranking. It’s not difficult if you understand a few basic concepts:

• Anchor text should be descriptive, using the link you’re sending people and keywords that reflect the page you’re recommending.
• If you know them, use high traffic keywords for your market (but only if the keywords relate to the page you’re sending visitors to).
• Knowing where to use anchor text is almost as important as the text itself. All external links should be anchor text, but often web designers forget internal links (i.e. links leading to pages within your site) although they are equally as important. Your home page is also critical for anchor text links. If you have a blog (and you should) make sure that any article, website or blog you reference has anchor text in the hyperlink.

Creating these hyperlinks is easy, especially if you’re using them in a blog, as most software has built-in one-click anchor text creation widgets. Make sure that anything hyperlinked on your site is anchor text. To reiterate: stay away from nebulous terms like “click here” or “follow this link” because you won’t get picked up by search engines that way. Make sure the text is focused and specific. How long can anchor text be? It doesn’t have to be long, but if need be, it can be multiple words. Keep in mind that as long as the words are relevant to your topic, the anchor text verbiage is all that matters.