I am creating a guide-type website. Almost all of my articles will appear on the Home page as excerpts, with each excerpt connected to the appropriate target article (each full article has its own Sparkle page).
I do know how to create a link at the end of the Home page excerpt which will take the reader to the target page with the full article. However…
My Home page excerpts can be 300 words. I’d like to drop the reader at the appropriate paragraph in the full article rather than forcing the reader to scan down the full article from the top to find where she should start reading again.
Pardon me if this is covered in the documentation but I couldn’t find it.
The simple way is to place a scroll location marker on the main article page at the point where you want your readers to start reading. You can then add the location marker to your hyperlink, like so.
The scroll locator is called an anchor and is named as such by default. However, you can name these scroll locators to something more meaningful if you want to.
A bonus tip: If you name the anchor appropriately to do with the content then the likes of Google will love you. In other words you can improve your website’s SEO by naming the anchor appropriately.
What I was getting at is if you have an anchor link going down to a section of your long page which is “about us” and the anchor (Scroll Location) taking the User to that location is called “anchor1” then there is no correlation between the link and the body of text leaving search engine bots confused… confusing the search engines algorithm, and hence affecting search engine ranking.
Google talks about this and there are stacks of other sources on the subject out there…
But this Bonus Tip is not only relevant to anchor points (Scroll Locations) but also to active inline links (Anchor Text) on a page taking us to different sections on a website. At the moment we are unable to create a Description (in Sparkle’s terms) for these links in Sparkle which I am really looking forward to - not only for search engine ranking but for on-screen readers for Users with eye-sight problems.
You can name it however you wish in your project file. However, when it is exported, Sparkle will convert it to lower case, and where you may have put a space in the name, it will be converted to a dash.
I’m never against properly naming things, and the anchor name becomes part of the link and of the URL so it does have a descriptive nature.
I think search engines ultimately (try to) simulate the experience of an actual human going through the whole web and finding the perfect page for a search query, so anything that a human would see is relevant, and that includes the anchor.
However those articles are second hand reporting about what Google says, and the first one is not relevant (anchor text is unrelated to in-page anchor links, and I didn’t notice it mentioning in-page links).
The second article has a few references to what Google says about in-page anchor links:
anchor links make it easier for Google to get an accurate read of what your webpage contains so that they’re more likely to show your webpage as a result to a relevant search query.
Google’s algorithms are always being updated, and recent updates suggest that elements like anchor links are becoming more important from an SEO perspective. While they may not be a direct ranking factor (meaning, more anchor links don’t automatically result in an SEO boost), they are an indirect ranking factor that can drive real results.
This doesn’t mention the anchor name, and is vague about how or why the anchor helps.
Google’s algorithms take into account how visitors interact with a website and how much time they spend on a website. By reducing your bounce rate and inviting interaction in the form of clicks, anchor links are a welcome addition for anyone who wants to give their site an SEO boost
Again not referring to the anchor name, this might be the clarification to the above, i.e. only referring to indirect benefits of anchors.
Using anchor links to create tables of contents with informative, descriptive titles, like the ones in this example, can help boost your chances of landing a featured snippet.
Probably another clarification of the idea initially expressed, but still no anchor names and still no mention of a direct benefit.
I think the SEO aspect is way overblown in this article, but probably more a matter of the article being produced by a content factory rather than by someone with hands on SEO experience.
Again not discouraging anybody from using proper naming! But I wouldn’t expect great SEO returns from this.
Yes I know I referenced a secondary source explaining it all since Google isn’t great for simplicity! But not here to argue semantics either.
Having done a Diploma in Web Design I can say that they rammed it down our throats that any type of active link had to have a “description” and anchors appropriately named. Not only for SEO purposes but also for on-screen readers. Here in Australia a partially sighted User sued the Olympics and won as they didn’t make an effort with their website in giving all their active links a “description / name”.
So I would say an anchor link as such is bad: www.flaminfig.com/contact-us.html#anchor1 An anchor link like this one is good:www.flaminfig.com/contact-us.html#secure-contact-us-form
So I would say an active text link as such is not great: <a href="www.flaminfig.com/contact-us.html>contact us</a> An active text link like this one is better:<a href="www.flaminfig.com/contact-us.html name="move across to our contact page">contact us</a>
I am noticing of late with returned search results that the search engines are displaying properly named anchor links to pages highlighting what I am searching for. That tells me the search engines are noticing.
From my perspective we are wanting no confusion when it comes to our search results and to give every User an even playing field to navigate the websites we build effectively and efficiently.
