What Are Anchor Links and How Do They Work
One of the things that small businesses are starting to love to do to improve their SEO is adding anchor links. With SEO becoming more competitive, you need to employ as many techniques as possible that will raise your rankings up. If you are still new to this, however, and want to learn more, then we got you. We have written down below the basic things you need to learn about anchor links:
What are Anchor Links?
First things first. Let us define what anchor links are.
Anchor links, also known as anchor tags, are basically a tag that you can attach to a word or a phrase. However, this differs from those hyperlinks wherein instead of taking your users to another webpage, it will take them to a different section of the page. In much simpler terms, it is a link on a page that brings you to a specific place on that page. Essentially, you are creating a unique URL within the same page. So how do you do it?
How to Use Anchor Links
The answer to that last question is not actually as complicated as you think. What you just need to keep in mind is your basic HTML. Here are the steps you can follow:
- Begin by writing out your copy and putting it on your website. This could either be as a new page or on an existing page.
- Next, open your text editor and determine where you want to insert the name anchor tag or link and where you want it to go (anchor destination). This is doable anywhere such as the heading, word, phrase, etc.
- Then, insert the anchor tag around the text you’re going to link. You will need to add an HTML code using <a> tag to create the link and to create the destination. Both will look like this:
- The anchor link will use this format:
- <a href=”#anchor1″ >Anchor Link Text</a>
- The anchor destination will use this format:
- <a name=”anchor1″>Anchor Destination Text</a>
And that is it!
As a reminder, just make sure that the “a href” and “a name” are identical except for a “#” symbol with “a href”
Also, make sure to never overcrowd your website with too much anchor links. Use them sparingly. Having too much will become an annoyance to your visitors who would be jumping too much all over the page. So be cautious.
Why Use Anchor Links
Now the question remains: why do we need to use them? Well, we got the answers here for you. Here are some of its benefits:
- No Scrolling is Needed. Your visitors would find this very convenient as they don’t have to go through multiple chunks of text.
- It Makes Content More Organized. Anchor tags keep things in order. You won’t have to create several web pages or even split a document. You can contain them in one place.
- Helpful to Search Engine. When Google shows your webpage in the results, it sometimes uses anchor tags to send the user to a particular section where the answer to the query is.
