Optimizing Anchor Text and Titles

Jakob Nielsen recently put up a nice article about link text, titled <a href=”http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nanocontent.html” target=”_blank rel=”" noopener noreferrer”>First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye. In it, he covers some guidelines for creating anchor text, reviews some specific examples, and reports on usability testing they did of various link implementations. The article is worth a read for any SEO.
Here is how he summarizes the main things you should do:

• Use plain language
• Use specific terminology
• Follow conventions for naming common features
• Front-load user- and action-oriented terms

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Basically, the lesson is don’t force users to think hard. They are busy, have other things they need to do. Making them work to find what they want is just a bad idea.
In addition, users have been trained to look at the top left of pages all over the web, so that is what they do. What it means is that you have to left justify the action or benefits keywords in your link text.
This is all great advice and the article is well worth a read. In addition to link text, I would argue that all this advice applies equally well to page titles. After all the page title often becomes the link text for your page when it shows up in the SERPs. Having a title that will entice a click through starts to sound like a really good thing. In addition to these usability benefits, it is a commonly held belief among SEOs that the search engines also weight the words at the start of a page title more than the words at the end.
So to put it into my own words for do’s and don’ts for page titles and link text:

1. Get the benefit of a page in the first 2 (or 3) words of its title and links to that page. Among other things, this means don’t lead with your brand or site name.
2. Keep it simple. Remember, people don’t want to think. They want to get something done.
3. Don’t invent new buzzwords. People don’t care. They want what they want, and they want it quickly. New buzzwords or unique new trademark phrases do not help your cause.

Let me illustrate this with a made-up example. Consider an Atlanta based car rental company called “In-Car-Nation”. Chances are that someone there might pick a home page title such as:
“In-Car-Nation provides superior quality service and car rentals”
Contrast to:
“Atlanta Car Rentals from In-Car-Nation”
I know which one of those two I would pick.