Hypertext links are the words that you click in one document that take you to another document, in the same Web site or in a different Web site. Each link has a
Uniform Resource Locator stored in it.
Hypertext also makes the Web a unique vehicle for publishing material. It allows for navigation through a
multiple-page document or
through two or more interconnected documents in many patterns rather than the traditional page-to-page linear navigation of a paper book or magazine.
As the Web continues to rapidly grow and change, new hypertext links to old and new documents are continually being created, and old ones are changing or being deleted altogether. One day a favorite site is just a hyperlink away, the next day it may no longer exist.
The traditional method for managing hypertext links is to bookmark (or add to Favorites) sites that you come across and think you may want to go to again.
Some of these links may become obsolete or disappear from the Web, but at least you will have a starting place for making the Web into your personal information source.
Probably one of the most important elements of keyword use is in anchor text. Anchor text is text found on a given web site that appears to be a hyperlink. The following link contains an example of how
Hyperlinks work.
In fact, anchor text has become such a major inclusion on web pages that companies often use it without any thought as to how it could affect their search engine rankings. How you use anchor text does matter, however, because anchor text is one of the most important search engine ranking factors. When a search engine looks at your web page, it automatically follows all the links that you have on the page. If those links (or even a large portion of those links) are text-based links, that’s even better, because then what the search engine sees is not just the link to another page, but also your keywords. It is not enough just to make all your links text-based, however. There is a fine science to taking advantage of the power of anchor text.
The first thing you should understand is that there are two kinds of anchor texts: 1) yours and 2) those that you did not create.
It really is important that you consider not only how you link with other people, but also how they will link back to you.
For example, if you do a Google search for the term "click,” you will find that the Apple QuickTime web site is at the very top of the list.
This is not because Apple loaded down the QuickTime site with the keyword "click."
What has actually happened is that many people link to QuickTime using the word "click" in their anchor text.
This is not hard to believe, because most web sites that use the QuickTime application usually include a text link to
"Click here to download" or something similar. As you can see, it is not just your own anchor text that matters.
How your site is included in the
anchor text of other websites which give you inbound links is also important.