As SEO’s we’ve all been “trained” to think that “inline links” (those within the normal flow of sentences and paragraphs) are the best kind of links to have. Inline links clearly provide a wider variety of surrounding text, and they are more “natural looking” (whatever that means) to search engines. However are inline links really better for the users, lets take a look below the surface and find out.
I’m not sure which came first but there’s probably a bit of a chicken and egg relationship between link based search engine algorithms and the W3c “don’t click here web specification. However the real question is, are wikipedia style links really beneficial to users and do they help the user experience, or are they really for the benefit of search engines? For a link based algorthym like Google’s, using cleanly focused anchor text can really work wonders for improving search relevancy. In the eyes of a search engine using brown bear does a much better job at conveying what I think the content on the other end of the link is about, as opposed to the following anchor text, what I saw on my last camping trip. I’m all for improving relevancy and I’ll continue to do my part focusing my anchor text, and I encourage you to do the same. However when you read is it better or even normal to stop what you’re doing follow the link and come back to where you left off? If I’m reading something and come across a new word if it’s important to comprehending the article I’ll go look the word up right away otherwise I wait till I’m done, highlight the word, right click and use my “search web for” link in the dialog box. The same thing for inline links if I come across a link I want to read I CTRL+CLICK the link to open in an background tab, and read the next page when I’m done, it’s just easier to concentrate that way. Lets look at following example:
There are four different bear species in North America. The largest of these species of the Alaskan brown bear and grizzly bear. The polar bear is also a large species that is somewhat smaller and shorter followed by the black bear.
Now chances are you understood that paragraph and had an idea where the hyperlinked text would take you, but compare it to this example:
There are four different bear species in North America. The largest of these species of the Alaskan brown bear and grizzly bear. The polar bear is also a large species that is somewhat smaller and shorter followed by the black bear.
Additional Bear Resources
I think the second example is not only clearer and easier to understand, but in addition much more use able than the first. I was able to read through the paragraph, gets it meaning without worrying I was missing something, and at the end I was presented with a series of links to further explore the topic. The anchor text for the links was the title for each of the pages (I eliminated one word from the last link if you want to be technical) but from users standpoint I still think the bottom style of linking the whole sentence “works better”. If we try focusing the anchor text to help the engines I don’t think the end result is more desirable:
Grizzly Bear – National Wildlife Federation
or
I think this is clearly a case of search engine implementation and ranking algorithms having a negative affect on the end user experience an usability.
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