Jump links (also called anchor links or bookmarks) are a special kind of internal links that direct users to a specific section of a page. In terms of UX, they are very useful for page skimming as they help users navigate long pages, without scrolling or searching on the page.
Let’s say, for example, that you are here to learn how to add jump links to your web pages. Click on this jump link and go to the how-to section.
Jump links in SEO
From the SEO standpoint, jump links have a fun story: Google stopped indexing them as they were considered “confusing”. Recently though, it restarted using these anchors as the reading experience has become more and more fragmentary with the rise of mobile and voice devices. Nowadays, both from Google and for webmasters, jump links are an easy and yet effective way to serve the users’ a very specific piece of information.
In other words, jump links today represent a useful tool for the so-called passage-based content optimization, one of the emerging SEO trends for 2021.
How can I add jump links to my page?
To add a jump link to a specific part of the page you need to follow these steps:
- Give to the paragraph you want to link a name — that you will use to create the jump link itself. For SEO purposes, it’s better to use a word or a concise phrase that describes the link’s destination. In case you’re using a phrase, add spaces in the form of underscores.
- Add the name of the paragraph to the HTML code of your page. Just copy and paste this simple code putting the name you chose in place of paragraph_name:
<a id="paragraph_name"></a>
- Add a jump link. Now that you have marked your paragraph or any other object on the page with its own anchor, you can use its name to add a jump link to it. You can use this code (don’t forget to use the name you chose in the first step):
<a href="paragraph_name"></a>
That’s it! Easy peasy, uh?