Does anchor text from internal links give you any edge ?
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Anchor texts are probably one of the most important and influential factors when it comes to SERP results. SEO’s pretty much unanimously agrees that the choice of right anchor texts influence your search engine ranks.
But how about anchor texts from internal links ? Does your linking structure take into consideration the anchor texts while linking pages ? And if yes, how do you craft them ? Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz has written a thought provoking article here, where he is discussing the same subject – about the importance of anchor text in internal links.
Rand has come up with the following conclusions on his test.
- Internal Anchor Text Has Very Little Impact on the Homepage
- Excessive Internal Anchor Text Linking / Manipulation Can Trip An Automated Penalty on Google
- Beyond a Certain Point, Adding More Internal Links to a Page Does Not Neccessarily Flow More Anchor Text Value
Well, in a more understandable form, it means (more or less).
- No matter how you craft the anchor text for homepage, it pretty much depends on the anchor text from “incoming links” on other sites.
- Using the same anchor text for a page internally can trigger a pattern with Google and Google does not like too many pattens 
(A similar phenomenon to anchor text from other sites)
- In any page from the site, it’s not adviceable to have too many internal links. Now how much is “too many” – you decide.
And my ideas regarding this are -
- Anchor texts from internal links does not affect you in cutting your competition on the SERPs.
- However, internal links to internal pages from the most important pages, like the homepage and the most active pages does matter.
- It’s best not to follow a particular pattern while crafting anchor texts. This is true in the case of internal links as well as sourcing inbound links from other sites.
One thing we have to agree on is that a well thought out internal linking system definitely gives you an advantage over a website with little interlinking between it’s internal pages.
Really interestign post, though I’m slightly confused now. I have been manually updating a ‘news’ section on our site, to detail new products as we launch them, or if there have been favourable reviews of our products etc… I am careful to choose the correct Anchor Text so it is clear where the link is going.
On such a page as ‘news’ can there be too many links when the news is concerning our products?
Jon, this is again not a hard and fast rule. We might have to try and find out what works best for each domain. However I think it might not be a problem at all to link to your products with the right anchor text. If you are using an auto-linker script that links to the product page for all occurance of the keyword, then it might be a pattern worth studying. Other wise, as long as the news page has a bit of activity and importance I think it’s not going to hurt.
Thanks for the tip!
I would like to read more on anchor texts and internal linking. This post brings more questions to light then answers.
Most importantly I wonder about internal links inside of a cms or wordpress system that are automatically created or with breadcrumb navigation that are repeated several times on a site.
Well, Google does place importance on what terms are used for anchor text for internal pages when determining the anchor text used for Sitelinks (if given to a site.)
One of my sites has site links, and one of the sitelinks says “No Comments” … it was a small niche site, and I had messed up the theme a little, so really the only link to a certain page was the link to comments from the front page. Well, that link said “No Comments” and sure enough that’s what it shows on the Sitelinks (quite embarrassing) ….
So, just a little tip for those who are lucky enough to get sitelinks for their site…. make sure your internal structure is set in place with the anchor texts you want.
Well, one of the secrets of successful SEO is to be affiliated with popular and good sites.
You said it right Mani.
So it is better to use anchor text for external link than internal links? Now is Google the only search engine that takes anchor text into consideration? Anyway thanks for the tip.
Hey mani… i was just curious, if we create a link, does it have to be targeted in _blank or same window? I am targeting all my links with _blank (open in new window) because i don’t want people leave the page too soon or if he/she accidentally click a link then they don’t lose page they are reading… let me know if this affects any seo or not…
Agung, _blank and _self attributes in the link won’t affect the SEO, so feel free to use either one how you want it.
Yeah it still works. But the demands are higher. The url you are using has to be posted on places with relevance.
The good old method with just anchor text, but way off relevance to each other, are without value.
This is a really interesting and useful thread . Thanx for your help.. i was just searching for how to make my internal links.