What is the SEO Value of No Anchor Text in Links?

This is regarding anchor text in a link. Of course, website owners and html programmers realize the importance of having “anchor text” in a link which appears on the page before the closing tag but the issue is regarding the effect of “not” using any visible anchor text.

For example, on many blogs and websites there are often images which are clickable and go to a linked site since the clickable-link is in the code. However, the image is often there mostly for its graphical impact and also acts as a link when clicked. However, there is no indication to the site visitor to click-on the link and in fact the visitor may not realize they can click on the image to visit a linked website.

The question is does the fact there may be NO visible anchor text detract or even eliminate the link value in the search engines and if the answer is yes, to what degree does it negate or dilute the value of the link?

An example of this question is the picture of the anchor below. When clicked-on the link goes to the home-page of this website but what is the effect (if any) of there being no visible anchor text on the page?

Is it a Good Idea to Use WordPress vs HTML?

Personally. I much prefer standard html sites vs WordPress sites. However, with that said, I must say a well designed WP site certainly can look great and be successful. Blogs and forums in particular do extremely well using WordPress where richness of features and live user interactivity are highly desired features, but with that said, I still like HTML vs Woprdpress by far for making “regular” (non-blog non-forum) new sites.

After working for years with regular html before using WordPress at first I found the WordPress learning curve to be huge and taking vast amounts of time. One of the toughest aspects was the look and feel of a WP site which is difficult to control and tricky to modify vs much easier to change html sites. Heavy spam or bot posts of WP sites are also a negative issue which is always looming but that is not a big problem involving standard html sites.

In addition, I do not think WordPress security is that good judging by some WP sites I know being hacked in the past. Speaking of security, the ongoing need to frequently update the version number is also an unwanted hassle, especially since the automatic upgrade capacity can and does sometimes fail.

In fact, you always need to worry your old WP version may not be fully compatible with the latest version and if not your site will go down when the upgrade fails and the old site will then stop functioning due to the upgrade failure. Been there and done that too. Even backups are a big hassle since there are extra steps involved to copy the data base but with standard html the database can be easily copied using simple FTP at the same time as regular htm files, with no other steps needed.

As far as search engine optimization is concerned I suspect WP and HTML are roughly equal in that regard. However, with that said, it’s much easier to do search engine verifications with html sites since it can be quite confusing trying to determine where the needed search engine verification codes are inserted into WordPress sites (because of the .php file names and confusing directory and folder structure, but with HTML and .htm files that’s all quite basic by comparison.

In my opinion, a big reason WordPress is so popular are the vast numbers of people who say they are WP programmers and designers (it must be easy to become one), or sell products that only work with WP, including many web-developer special offers and Clickbank products. Recently I decided to NOT buy several excellent sounding new developent site offers and programs since they were offered or designed only for WordPress and I was reluctant to add more WP sites no matter how good the offer sounds.

As a test, just ask a WordPress minisite developer, site designer or seller to help with some simple and basic modifications to your old html website and you will likely learn he/she can not do the job, no matter how basic it may be. Been there and done that. In fact, some of the things I wanted a bit of help or advice with from my WordPress developers or designers were real basic which I ended up doing myself, and I am far from being good with programming.