John Mueller explained the difference in using many words in the anchor text as compared to the less/fewer words. Mueller addressed all of this in the latest SEO office-hours live stream
Recommendation:
Mueller Was Asked Following Questions:
“Do you treat anchor text that contains many words differently in comparison to anchor text that contains 2 words only?
I mean do you assign more value to those two words when you compare it to anchor text that has like 7 or 8 words?
For example – 2 words anchor text like “cheap shoes” and the 7 word anchor text is “you can buy cheap shoes here.”
Can you elaborate on that?”
Mueller Responded:
Google doesn’t bias on the basis of longer and shorter anchor text if comes to rankings. However, the longer text always provides more meaning and context to the page with bits of help in boosting ranking. More context on the page, the better the ranking efficiency it has.
“I don’t think we do anything special to the length of words in the anchor text. But rather, we use this anchor text as a way to provide extra context for the individual pages.
Sometimes if you have a longer anchor text that gives us a little bit more information. Sometimes it’s kind of like just a collection of different keywords.
So, from that point of view, I wouldn’t see any of these as being better or worse. And it’s something where, especially for internal linking, you want to probably focus more on things like how can you make it clearer for your users that if they click on this like this is what they’ll find.
So that’s kind of the way that I would look at it here. I wouldn’t say that shorter anchor text is better or shorter anchor text is worse, it’s just a different context.”
Suggestions For Site Owners
Site owners should start using anchor text as a tool. It makes it easier for Google to get more information about the pages and understand them better. Site Owners should site long anchor text for the important pages rather than writing a detailed long anchor text.
Examples of URLs that need Long Anchor Text:
- High-value pages on your own website.
- The content you’ve contributed to other sites.
- Pages that contain links back to your website.
- Pages that contain mentions of you or your brand/business.
- And so on.