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Anchor Text and "Hover Over" Text
lukecorden
Posts: 20
Joined: 30 Apr 13
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28 Aug 13 9:55 pm

Anchor Text and "Hover Over" Text

OK, apologies, I might be making up phrases here but I have a question that someone more informed than me will hopefully put me straight on.

When I am linking internally to pages on my blog it seems to me that there is two forms of anchor text.

The first is composed of the words you chose form your blog text, for example, from "By eating right and exercising your entire body, the fat will start to disappear all over." you might select "By eating right and exercising your entire body" as the text to link from. Thus, this chosen text becomes your standard anchor text (correct?).

However, when you create a link from this text you can enter more text which only appears when you hover over the link- presumably giving direction as to where this link is pointing.

In this example this link is pointing to a post I have made reviewing a body type diet and so I have entered the (meta) anchor text to display as "body type diet burns fat and feeds muscle" . This (meta) anchor text is the keyword for the page this link is pointing to.

OK, so after that long introduction I have 3 questions:

1) what is this hover over text actually called?!
2) more importantly, should I be KW optimizing both on page anchor text and this hover over text for the page the link is pointing to?
3) does it really matter?

This example is live at the following page: http://www.lovehandlemagic.com/

Many thanks.

LC
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cecille.l
Posts: 6369
Joined: 25 Feb 11
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29 Aug 13 7:49 am

 Hi Luke,

The links on the page http://www.lovehandlemagic.com/ are also anchor text. The only difference it has with the other text is that it has the "title" attribute on the link. This means that your link has a specified name/title.

If you look at the code of your links on that page, they look like the codes below:



The usual HTML code for an anchor text looks like this:



With the first set of codes, you have the "title" attribute so when you hover on the link you see the title of the link (which is usually called a "tooltip" and works similar to when you're hovering over buttons and you get a small text on what that button is for). The title does not necessarily mean the title of the page you're linking to on that anchor text (although I suggest you use it in that way). It could also be a description of that page you're linking out to.

1) what is this hover over text actually called?!


>>> It's usually called a "tooltip".

2) more importantly, should I be KW optimizing both on page anchor text and this hover over text for the page the link is pointing to?


>>> It's the actual anchor text ( the text in between the <a href> and </a>) that need to contain your target keyword and not really the title of the link. I think it's great that you have the title of the page you're referring to on there so that users know what page you're referring them to.

3) does it really matter?


>>> Optimizing your anchor text for internal links is part of on-page SEO. I don't see any harm with making sure related pages on your site are linked and all articles are optimized.

Hope that helps. Have a good day!
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Cecille

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lukecorden
Posts: 20
Joined: 30 Apr 13
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29 Aug 13 9:52 pm

 A stellar explanation. The addition of the html was really useful too. Thanks.
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cecille.l
Posts: 6369
Joined: 25 Feb 11
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30 Aug 13 2:28 pm
"A stellar explanation."


Your feedback made my day (and made me blush a bit too!). I appreciate it!

Have a good weekend!
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Cecille

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