Has an internal link with no anchor text
This means that the URL in question contains at least one outgoing anchor link which has no anchor text.
Why is this important?
Internal linking is the main way you help users and search engine crawlers discover pages on your website. From an SEO perspective, internal links are the most effective method of indicating to search engines the relative importance of pages on your website.
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in the hyperlink (which is normally blue in the browser), and search engines use anchor text to provide context about the link's destination.
SEO-friendly anchor text is succinct and relevant to the target page.
If an outgoing link has no anchor text, this represents a missed opportunity to provide additional information about the target page to search engines, which could have an impact on this page's ability to rank for relevant search queries.
What does the Hint check?
This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which contains at least one outgoing anchor link which has no text.
Examples that trigger this Hint:
Any of the example links below would trigger the Hint.
An anchor with no text
An anchor with empty span, but no text
An anchor with other attributes, but no text
Why is this Hint marked 'Opportunity'?
In Sitebulb, this Hint is an Opportunity, as it represents a situation where you could optimize the site to potentially gain more search traffic.
Anchor text is an important ranking factor, and since website owners actually have complete control over anchor text on internal links, this is an area of on-site optimization which is considered important.
We recommend reviewing instances of missing anchor text, and where appropriate, adjusting the links to add in useful and relevant anchor text.
Depending on the specific issue, you may be able to fix a number of pages at once, if the link in question is used in a template for lots of pages on the website.
How do you get more data from Sitebulb?
From the URL List, click the blue Hint Details button, which will bring up a slide-across window with specific details about the Hint for each URL.
This will show you any outgoing anchor links with no anchor text, highlighted in red in the HTML. The right-hand scrollbar will show you the area to scroll down to, and then once you have scrolled you will see the highlighted link in red.
