Oct 01

Anchor Tags, IDs, Google and You!

So Google added yet another facet to their SERPs this week. The new feature allows you to jump to the information you want right from the search snippets. At first glance it seems they’re acknowledging the proper use of the named anchor tag. Further investigation turns up clues of nimble ID attribute seeding.

Page Division Benefits for Visitors to Your Web Site

This is great news for both sides of the SEO table. The search engine user can click directly to the desired information instead of wandering around the page once they’re directed to a site by the SERP. The old way was sort of like getting directions to a house party that left you at the entrance of a neighborhood. This new way leads you to the right driveway.

Page Division Benefits for Web Developers

For the web professional, proper SEO techniques will allow you more granularity and specificity in your SERP presence. A few choice placements of the correct anchor tags (and possibly usage of the obligatory ID tags) can net great returns and more ‘good’ traffic to your sites. When I say ‘good’ traffic, I mean people who won’t end up in the bounced column in your analytics.

For a more in-depth look at how the new algorithm works, please jump over to Site Booster’s article entitled New Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility.

What Comes Next?

I’m more interested in if IDs will be included in the Google SERPs. I’d rather give IDs double duty than have to insert <a> tags into my code. Most well-written pages employ header tags, <h1> and so on.

The example Google gives on their blog uses:

<a id=”HDL” name=”HDL”>

Now I’m not sure if the Google algorithm is triggering on the anchor name or the ID. Big points to the big G if they use both. I’m using different methods in different areas of this article to see how things turn out.

Your Turn

Let me know what you’re thinking about this new avenue of Search Engine Optimization and how you plan to implement it. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.