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Anchors are a fantastic tool to help improve your website or blog. The great thing about them is not only do they help with the readability and navigation for your reader, but they help with SEO too!
That’s right, anchors help with your SEO. Google loves anchors because they help the search engine to see how everything links in your site. Don’t get me wrong, SEO is a complex field and there is slightly more to it than that. But on the whole, it has been agreed by the experts that anchors improve your SEO. However, like any SEO trick, the important thing to remember is to use anchors only as necessary. As with most things, too much of one thing isn’t good. Google knows if you’re trying to over-optimise your blog posts/website and will penalise you for this.
So yes, use anchors, but make sure you only use them where relevant and where they improve your post/page.
What is an anchor?
Have you ever been on a website, clicked on a hyperlink and been taken to another part of exactly the same page? That’s an anchor. A great example of anchors in action is in my post: 5 Easy Ways To Improve Your SEO. In this post, you’ll see how I have hyperlinks which lead the reader to different parts of the blog post depending on what the reader is looking for.
Check out the video below for a snapshot of anchors in practice!
Another bonus of anchors, is that they contribute to your SEO. According to MOZ:
“Anchor text matters greatly to SEO, as it can indicate to Google what a page is about. In fact, using anchor text as a ranking signal is included in several Google patents. Not using anchor text or using generic anchor text, such as “click here” is generally considered a poor SEO practice.”
MOZ.com
Unfortunately, anchors are just another feature of WordPress which people get themselves panicked by. And there really isn’t any need. Adding and using anchors is relatively easy. In fact, if you can enter a hyperlink into your blog post or page already, then there’s no reason why you can’t add an anchor in too.
Another example of anchors is the table of contents at the top of each of my blog posts. Each heading in the table of contents is linked to a sub-heading within the post. Clicking on the heading in the table of contents lets you skip the parts of the post you don’t want to read, in favour of getting quickly to the information you need.
So, how do I add an anchor into my blog posts on WordPress?
This question has a two part answer. That’s because before you can add an anchor into your blog post, you must first create the anchor.
Step 1: Creating an anchor
- Click on the ‘Settings’ cog in the top right of your blog post to display the ‘Block’ settings.
- Click ‘Advanced’ to open up the HTML anchor settings.
- Type in the name of your anchor.
Top tips for creating anchors
- Your anchors MUST be unique to each link, otherwise they won’t work!
- Your anchors can include the following symbols : (colon) – (hyphen) . (full stop/period).
- Anchors cannot include spaces.
- The start of the anchor must start with a letter of the alphabet.
Step 2: Inserting an anchor
- To insert your anchor, type the text you would like your link anchored to. Highlight the text/image/button and then click on the link button.
- Type in your anchor name, with a hashtag (#) at the front of the anchor.
Can I insert an anchor from another blog post or page?
Yes, you sure can!
As you get more confident with using anchors, you might want to start adding them in from different posts and pages. This way, when your reader clicks on a link, rather than being taken to the top of a blog post, they are straight away taken to the information relating to the post they were just reading about.
To insert an anchor from another blog post or page
Simply insert a link which has the URL of the page and the anchor included. For example, to link to an anchor on my 5 Easy Ways To Improve Your SEO post, I would type in my text, select it and then the link would read: https://beginwithwp.com/5-easy-ways-to-improve-your-SEO#tip5.
Anchors away!
Still need some extra help with anchors? WordPress have created a handy guide about anchors and inserting them into your posts which you might want to read for further information. Once you’ve got the hand of inserting anchors, you’ll realise just how easy they are to use.
This post was proofread using Grammarly.
this is helpful! thank you. I’ve always glanced at anchors, not sure what they were and now thanks to your guide I can start using them in my blog posts.