Google’s newly expanded guidelines on best practices for links have surprising similarities to what we know about algorithms and the correct use of HTML.

Here are four takeaways found in Google’s updated SEO link best practices.

1. The title attribute can act like anchor text

Google can use the title attribute if the anchor text is missing.

The title attribute applied to the link element can be used instead of the anchor text if the anchor text is missing.

For example, Google might use the title attribute in the following link as anchor text:

Here’s a normal link with anchor text:

<a href="https://www.example.com/">Example Anchor Text</a>

This is a link that is missing anchor text but has the title attribute:

<a href="https://www.example.com/" title="Example Anchor Text></a>

In the example above, the title element will be used by Google as if it were body text.

Proper use of the title attribute on the link element

Formally, the purpose of the title attribute when applied to a link element is to provide a similar type of information found in the anchor text of the link.

The HTML standards that make up the body for HTML, W3C, defines the extension The purpose of the title attribute applied to an element anchor:

The title attribute is not specific to the element .

The title attribute is actually a file global attributewhich means that it is common to all elements.

This means that one can place a heading element on a paragraph

and italic and even on a title element

.

Using a title attribute on an element will result in a tooltip.

So if you add a title attribute to a title element

,

etc., a tooltip containing the words in the title attribute will appear from the words in the title element when the reader hovers over the title.

2. Why is a very long anchor text bad?

Google’s new guidelines on links state that long anchor text is considered bad practice and recommend that it be (largely) brief.

This should come as no surprise since the official purpose of the body text, according to W3c, is Describe what the link is.

The goal of this technique is to describe the purpose of the link by providing descriptive text as the content of the element.

The description allows the user to distinguish this link from other links on the web page and helps the user decide whether to follow the link.

The destination URI is generally not descriptive enough. “

This highlights the importance of knowing the proper and correct usage of HTML.

If the HTML is valid, if the various elements and attributes are used as they are supposed to be used, Google will likely respond positively to it.

This shows how important it is to know the correct usage of HTML.

When in doubt, check with W3C or the Mozilla HTML Developer Pageswhich in my opinion is easier to use.

I prefer the Mozilla developer pages because they are better organized than the official W3C resource.

3. Context and natural language are important for anchor text

The use of natural language is, in my opinion, important to ensure that content is properly optimized.

Every AI and machine learning algorithm released by Google today is focused on natural language understanding.

Google’s algorithms do not award a “score” based on keywords in the content.

So if Google’s algorithms are interpreting the text a certain way (by looking at entities, verbs, context, etc.), then it makes sense to write clear, easy-to-understand content.

According to Google’s new guidelines for links. Thinking about context and using natural language is best practice for anchor anchor text.

The new guidelines recommend:

Write as naturally as possible, and resist the urge to cram every keyword associated with the page you’re linking to (remember, keyword stuffing is a violation of our spam policies).

Ask yourself, does the reader need these keywords to understand the next page?

If you feel like you’re forcing keywords into the anchor text, it’s probably too much.”

In the old days, it was useful to stuff keywords into the anchor text.

Since Google uses techniques like BERT to understand the meaning of sentences and phrases, it makes sense to write natural anchor text that Google can understand.

Google uses more than BERT to understand search queries and web pages, and I’m just using BERT as an example of the importance of well-written natural language.

2019 official consumer facing BERT ad State how important context To understand natural language:

Especially for long, conversational queries or searches where prepositions like ‘for’ and ‘to’ matter a lot for meaning, search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query.

You can search in a way that feels natural to you.”

Official 2018 BERT ad facing the flag He talks about the importance of “context” to understand the meaning of the content.

This is what he says:

“…pre-trained representations can be either context-free or contextual, and contextual representations can also be unidirectional or bidirectional.

Context-free models such as word2vec or GloVe create a one-word inclusion representation for each word in the vocabulary.

For example, the word ‘bank’ would have the same context-free representation in ‘bank account’ and ‘river bank’.

Contextual models instead create a representation of each word that is based on the other words in the sentence.

For example, in the sentence ‘I have entered the bank account’, the one-way contextual form would represent ‘the bank’ based on ‘You have entered the ‘account’ and not the ‘account’.

However, BERT represents “the bank” by using both the preceding and following context – “I have entered into … the account” – starting at the bottom of the deep neural network, making it deeply bidirectional. “

Obviously, context and natural language are important to the Google algorithm. With what I just wrote about just one of Google’s algorithms, BERT, Google’s advice on how to write anchor text takes on an extra layer of meaning:

“Write as naturally as possible…”

4. No link chaining

Chain links mean when you add links so close together that each linked word does not adequately convey what the linked page is about.

In addition, the text that surrounds and provides context for the link is lost when linking links.

Google’s new guidelines explain:

“Do not link links next to each other; it is difficult for readers to distinguish between links, and you lose sight of the text surrounding each link.”

This tip comes down to understanding the correct use of HTML elements and headings in order to write valid HTML that Google understands.

Again, I highly recommend reading the Mozilla developer pages about HTML.

Find links optimized

There are a lot of interesting ideas in Google’s newly expanded guidelines on best practices for links.

It’s worth taking the time to read.

Read Google’s extended guidelines:

Connect Google Best Practices

Featured image by Shutterstock / Asier Romero