If you’re into SEO, you know that anchor text is an important part of optimizing your page. Nobody wants to go through a long URL to figure out what the heck it is you’re selling. A keyword optimized anchor text is the best way to get the click. But does your anchor text suck? Not sure? Well, you might want to read this article to find out. I have seen all types of anchor text and let me tell you… some of the stuff out there is crap.

I am going to start out with one of my biggest pet peeves. How many people do you know use the anchor text “click here”? Come on, be honest. If you go to Google and look up the keyword phrase “click here” do you know what the number one site is? It’s Adobe. Why? Because everybody and their grandmother uses “click here” to direct people to Adobe’s PDF reader so that they can read their equally crappy ebook. Okay, so when you’re creating anchor text to your site PLEASE don’t use “click here”.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, what SHOULD you use? Well, you want to go through the relevant keywords to whatever it is you’re promoting. If your site is a blog on home business tips and your name is John Doe, you might want to say something like, visit my site at, and then use the following as anchor text…”John Doe’s Home Business Tips.” Make sense? I mean THAT’S the main focus of your site, so why would you want to use anything else?

But what if you’re sending people to a sales page that is promising some kind of a solution to a problem? In that case, you DON’T want to use the name of the sales page as your anchor text. What you want to do is use a benefit of going there and getting the product. Something along the lines of “Cure Your Warts In 3 Days” or whatever it is you’re promising as the benefit. You want the prospect to see the immediate benefit of clicking on that link in the link itself.

What if it’s a toss up between the two, a descriptive site OR a benefit? In that case, you have to look at the purpose of WHY you’re sending the prospect there. Is it to get the immediate benefit or solution to the problem they’re having or is it to get more information? If it’s to get more information, use the site name. If it’s to get the immediate benefit, use the benefit anchor text. Be consistent with this depending on what your purpose is.

Okay, got it? Don’t use “click here”, don’t use long URLs if you can help it and decide between the name of your site and the benefit depending on the purpose of why you’re sending the prospect to the page in the first place. If you follow these simple tips, you will come up with anchor text that not only doesn’t suck, but actually gets the job done in spades.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to get your site to the top of the SERPs? Pick up Kurt Melvin’s Think Links. You can read my complete review of the product at Think Links Review