Backlinks and Anchor Text

A popular gardening magazine publishes "What We Learned From Killing 30 Houseplants" and, in the section on watering, links to Leafline's snake plant guide. That one link brings readers straight to Leafline, and it tells search engines something too: a respected site on this subject vouched for this page.

The rule

A link is a recommendation; its words say what for.

A backlink (or inbound link) is a link on another site that points to yours. Search engines have long treated links as recommendations: a page that many relevant, trusted pages point to is probably worth showing. But links are not equal:

• Relevance. A link from a gardening magazine means more for a plant guide than one from a car-parts shop.
• Trust in the linking site. A respected publication outweighs a page nobody reads.
• Editorial choice. A link someone chose to add because the page helped their readers is the kind engines want to count. A bought or traded link is not.
• Placement. A link in the body of an article, where a reader might click it, tends to mean more than one in a footer list of hundreds.

The anchor text is the clickable text of a link:

Here the anchor text is "a clear guide to watering snake plants". It gives engines a short description of the target page in someone else's words.

A natural set of links has varied anchors: the brand name ("Leafline"), the bare address, descriptive phrases, even "this guide". When nearly every link to a page uses the identical keyword phrase, such as "cheap snake plant buy online", it looks arranged, because real people rarely all pick the same words.

The shortcut

Judge any link with three questions: Relevant? Given freely? Would a reader click it? Three yeses make a valuable link.

Drills

Answer fast — trust the rule.

Remember

• A link is a recommendation; its anchor text says what for.
• Relevant, freely given, clickable: three yeses make a strong link.
• The trap: piles of identical keyword anchors, and paid links without a label.