Anchor text links are a form of hyperlink on a web page that directs the user to a different web page or to a specific section of a web page. This is normally done for reference to aid understanding. A hyperlink can be a text or a image link. An anchor text link is a hyperlink with visible, clickable text and are an effective search engine optimisation (SEO) technique.

In-line anchor text links

Anchor text links can be placed anywhere in a page such as in headers, sidebars, footers and in the main body of text known as in line anchor text links. All links are valuable from an SEO point of view but some are easier to implement and manipulate than others and therefore carry less weighting. In line anchor text is the hardest to manipulate and therefore carries the most weighting.

When should I use in-line anchor links?

Inline Anchor text links should be used when they are of benefit to both the user and the search engine. Including keywords in anchor text is a highly effective SEO technique.

Google Penguin

Google Penguin penalised sites that had a low anchor text diversity and concentrated on only a few keywords. It also penalised websites with a large number of exact match anchors vs. partial match anchors. This has caused anchor texts o lengthen to insure a high keyword density and more partial text anchors.