I’ve noticed that several of our Blogging Idol contestants have been adding useful links embedded within their posts, but not everyone employs links in the most effective manner.
Embedded links serve a dual purpose. Most importantly, they add to the information value of your post and improve the reader experience. But embedded links also contribute to the overall goals of SEO: to improve the position of your work in the search engine results for searches closely related to the subject of your post.

Fortunately, the characteristics that make a link effective for SEO purposes are essentially the same characteristics that make it effective for the reader experience.

There are, of course, two main elements in an embedded link: anchor text — the word or phrase that you highlight as the hyperlink — and the target material at the address defined by the hyperlink. Together, the two should create a natural information element that is relevant, adds information value, and delivers on expectations.

To link or not to link.
Since links help your cause in terms of SEO, it’s worth a little effort to find  or even create linking opportunities within your posts. That said, if you can’t find a way to make links useful and relevant to the reader then forget about it. But there are some obvious opportunities to explore, and some circumstances where a link is required.

If your blog post makes reference to another blog or article, then it’s polite to include a link to the original, even if you include an extract in your text. Even when you’re commenting on, or referring to news or an event that is already high profile, some readers may appreciate a link to a foundation article that covers the news or event.

If your post assumes a certain level of knowledge or expertise on the part of your reader, you might consider including a link to material that would help less knowledgeable readers get up to speed on the topic such as — in the case of this post — Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Regardless of the reason for an embedded link, there should be no doubt that it is relevant and helpful both in the context of your post and in the context of the immediate surrounding text. If you simply want to provide links to further reading or related articles or blog posts, add them as a list at the end of your post and identify them as such.

Anchor text
The words you choose to anchor the hyperlink play an important role both in the SEO value of the link and in setting up the reader’s expectations of the linked material.
For the purpose of SEO, the anchor text should include a word or phrase that is a common search term for the prime subject or theme of your post — which should also be reflected in the target material. However, with the reader in mind, the anchor text should also be a natural part of your text that does not interrupt the flow of reading. The anchor text should also accurately set the reader’s expectation of what they will find if they follow the link.

Here’s an approach to embedded linking that you see quite often:

You can learn a lot about SEO here.

It works and is not misleading, but the anchor text “here” does not tell search engines anything about the page you’re linking to so it fails from an SEO perspective.

A better approach that serves both the reader and the search engines would be:

If you’d like to learn more about SEO, Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is an excellent resource.

It’s worth taking a few moments to review your embedded links and see how they may be improved before you publish. Your readers will thank you, and it could make a difference to your search engine standing.

Oh…and test your links.