Anchor Link refers to a type of hyperlink that is used to link to a specific part of the same web page or to a specific place on another page. This is accomplished by using anchor text, which is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. Anchor links are particularly useful for improving user navigation and experience on websites with long pages or detailed content, allowing users to jump directly to the information that is most relevant to them.
The structure of an anchor link for linking to a specific part of the same page includes a hash symbol (#) followed by an identifier (known as an anchor name or ID) that corresponds to a specific section of the page. This identifier is assigned to an element on the page (like a header tag) through the “id” attribute. When a user clicks on the anchor link, the browser scrolls the page to the section where the matching ID is found.
For example, in the HTML code <a href="#section1">Go to Section 1</a>
, clicking on “Go to Section 1” would take the user to a part of the same page where there is an element defined with id="section1"
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Anchor links are also important for SEO because they can help search engines understand the structure and content of a webpage better. The anchor text used with these links provides context about the linked content, which can influence how search engines index and rank the content. Effective use of anchor links and descriptive anchor text can contribute to a site’s SEO by making it more user-friendly and by helping search engines interpret the page content more accurately.