Anchor name URLs & anchor blocks: how Google sees them?

[madcow78]

Hi guys,

Anchor name URLs & anchor blocks: how Google sees them?

As far as I know Google hasn't ever recommended anchor name URLs and anchor blocks, mostly when you have one page site, but I have ran into an organic result with an hyper-link to an anchor name URL.

There is a proper link and there aren't on the page and the code the words "Jump to". It means Google has put those words there and it has also taken the header of that block as anchor text.

Why has Google placed that link?

The query is "faqs umbrella company", so I thought that Google has seen "faqs umbrella company" like "what is the most popular faq about umbrella companies?" and therefore perhaps the correct answer could be "Is an umbrella company the only option I have? What are the alternatives?".

Although, IMHO the most popular FAQ on Umbrella Companies should always be "what is an umbrella company".

Unfortunately, that page is only worthy of third Google organic result page and there is no hint of rich snippet or any kind of conversational/KBT optimisation on its source code.

Someone has any idea of why Google shows that link and if it's something that we can optimise in our pages?

Cheers

Pierpaolo

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[RuthBurrReedy]

Google is probably showing "Jump To" not because it shows up anywhere on the page, but because they understand that that is the function of the anchor links on-page. So you probably won't be able to change the page to get it to say something besides "Jump to" in the SERP - and that's OK, because your section head "is an umbrella company the only option I have?" is showing up in the snippet, and that is more important.

Here's a piece on Search Engine Land about this phenomenon: http://searchengineland.com/google-jump-to-links-within-search-snippets-26603, and Google Webmaster Central on it: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/using-named-anchors-to-identify.html. It looks like Google includes "Jump to" in the snippet to let users know that they will be taken to a point in the middle of the page (through the anchor link) instead of to the top of the page.

[madcow78]

Thanks

I found very useful the articles you posted. 
Anchor tagging doesn't deliver any improvement in rankings, but as far as you would it be possible to optimise a page for a broad keyword and for a commercial keywords across an anchor tagging?

I try to be more clear:

You sell cats, and you are "so lucky" to have a stock of Grumpy cat clones. So you create a landing page for "grumpy cat clones". On this page you create a commercial anchor tagging e.g. "buy grumpy cat clones", I would do this to hopefully see ranking the anchor tag URL for the commercial keywords and therefore having better user EX .

[RuthBurrReedy]

You could certainly give it a try! Just be careful not to keyword stuff - having your section titles as different variations of one target keyword can look repetitive to users and Google if there are too many of them.