Links with no anchor text

Anchor text is visible, clickable text. It is written between the opening and closing HTML tags of the link:

<a href="https://site.com"> anchor text </a>

In the browser, the anchor text will typically look like this:

Anchor text.

Anchor text is vital for your site's promotion because it helps users navigate through other sites to reach your site. It also helps the search engine to understand the page you are linking to. The anchor text on a page can affect your site's position, depending on the keywords contained within and around it. 

According to Google's patent for "indexing anchor tags in a search engine", the text around the link and the anchor text shows the relevance of a link. 

Links with no anchor text (so-called "naked links") do not have any text and are displayed on the page only as a URL - for example:

https://www.example.com

Using the naked URL is useless for SEO as they do not contain any keywords which explain what the page linked to is about. 

Google recommends against using such links in general. And to keep the majority of your links with anchor text. 

Content of the report "Links with no anchor text"

In this report in Labrika's dashboard, you can find information about links that do not contain anchor text. 

This will show:

1. Pages that have links with no anchor text;
2. URL of the links.

Using the report

After identifying any naked links on your site you should create anchor text (where necessary) to replace these URLs.

There are a few general rules to follow when creating anchor text. 

1. Do not use text that isn't related to the topic or the page's content that the link leads to. 
2. Write short but descriptive link text - this is usually a few words or a short phrase. 
3. Use keywords for your target page within the anchor text, but ensure that the link text looks natural
4. Avoid over-spamming (overuse of keywords) as search engines may see this as an attempt to artificially inflate your page's ranking. 
5. Build a natural link profile. This should include various types of links to your pages. 

In addition to using keywords in your link text, you can also use other types of anchor text such as: 

• Hidden semantic keywords. These are words and phrases related to the topic of your page, which are usually used together with these keyword/key phrases.
• The name of the site or brand (for example Labrika.ru);
• Headings of articles;

Do not use common phrases with a call to action such as: 

"Read more"

"Go here"

"Click here" etc.

These are not favored by Google as they do not reveal the content of the page behind the link. There is no descriptive text which allows the user to understand what they are clicking on.