Google Says Its Link Best Practices Guidelines Are Still Good Guidelines

Google’s John Mueller said the link best practices SEO documentation on its website are still “good guidelines” for both SEO and overall “accessibility & UX reasons.” The guidelines are only about 14 months old, so they are recent.

The question was specific to the anchor text section, where the person who asked the question wrote, “I was wondering how true this is today (the anchor text bit). I found that personally while writing I tend to rather naturally use generic keywords: here, read more and so on.”

Honestly, I also often find it natural to make many anchor text links using words like “over here,” or “click here.” It depends on how I am writing the sentence. To me, using keyword rich anchor text is an SEO thing, because I’ve been covering SEO for over 20 years…

But John Mueller of Google replied, “Those continue to seem like good guidelines – also for accessibility & UX reasons. They’re not requirements, so applying nuance is fine.”

Don’t be generic, be specific – as Google said:

So go at it, use keyword rich anchor text.

Here are those posts:

@JohnMu I was wondering how true this is today: https://t.co/4F4QIIpjdy (the anchor text bit). I found that personally while writing I tend to rather naturally use generic keywords: here, read more and so on.

— Ionut (@hackinglife7) April 17, 2024

Forum discussion at X.

Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.