What is the difference between Keywords and Anchor Text? If you are asking this question, you probably are learning about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
If you are just getting into the SEO game, then you know that the reason for doing SEO is to have your website come up in a search when someone is looking on the internet for your company or for the service you provide. Most of SEO efforts are aimed at getting ranked higher in a Google search. That is just a practical tactic, considering that almost 70% of all searches are conducted on google, followed by Bing at 13.31% of users, and Baidu having 12.53% of queries coming from their search engine.
So Keywords and Anchor Text are critical to having searchers find you on the internet. You need to optimize (we’ll talk about what that means shortly) the keywords or phrases that people will use when searching for your business.
Keywords vs. Anchor Text
Let’s talk about the difference between Keywords and Anchor Text. It’s actually pretty simple.
Keywords are the words or short phrases that people will use when looking for your business online. What words or phrases do people use when looking for your business? For our web development company, people may search for “Web Development Company”, or “Web Development Company nearest me” or “Website developers in Troy”. Those are all keywords.
Anchor Text are also short words or phrases, but they are used to link your website or blog article to another page on your website, or to another website other than yours. I made the words “Anchor Text” at the beginning of this paragraph into Anchor Text by adding an external link to a blog article about Anchor Text. Google likes that. You can also have Anchor Text on your website that links to other articles on the same website. That would be an example of an Internal Anchor Text.
How do I get Keywords and Anchor Texts?
First, compile a list of any and every search term you think someone could possibly use to find your business. Create an avatar in your mind of your ideal customer. What age are they? What service would they be looking for? Etc. Try to get inside their minds and guess what they would search for.
Here are three other ways to help you generate a list of keywords.
- To help come up with keyword suggestions, you could also use a service like Uber Suggest. You get three free searches per day for keywords.
- Try the autocomplete feature of Google. Start typing your keyword into the search box and Google will complete the phrase with keywords and phrases that are used most often.
- If you do a Google search on any of the keywords, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and there will be searches related to the one you just completed.
Now you want to get those keywords into the text on your website. You can have the exact phrase in your text, or some variation of it. For example, If I was optimizing for “best website development company near me”, I could write “212 Creative is the best website development company for all of your web development needs”. It has a partial match of the phrase, and also has our brand name in the phrase, which can be helpful if someone is searching for your exact company.
Optimize!
The next step is to get those keywords naturally woven into the content on your website. One way to do this is when writing your content, use the keywords to write information that your customers will find useful. Perhaps think of a question they may want answered, then write a blog article answering that question. At all times, have your heart in the right place. Don’t write articles just to unnaturally pepper them with keywords. Play the long game and always try to be useful, to be of service, to give value to your customers when you give the information.
Just like you get keywords into text, you can do the same thing with anchor text. I have inserted a couple of anchor texts in this article. This can be a fun and creative way to get your keywords on your website, but be careful not to overdo it. You also don’t want to have too many of the same key words–that is called keyword saturation, and Google looks at that unfavorably.
In summary, keywords are the words or phrases that people type into a search engine to find your company. Anchor text are words that have links to information outside of your website, or information within your website. Create a list of keywords, and use those words to writer information that your clients will find useful. Within that information, make sure to have the keywords naturally occur in the text. Also try to have anchor text with links to other information. Good luck on your SEO journey!
