Most experts would agree that having backlinks and great content are vital to the success of your SEO strategy.
You’ve heard of on-page SEO optimisation I’m sure.
Making sure the H1 and H2 tags are keyword-optimised, checking the number of times your keyword or phrase is repeated in the content, and so on.
That’s good and all, but where you can go one step further for on-page SEO optimisation is by using “Jump To” links on your page.
This is a less well known SEO tip that can bring you even more results.
Overview for Quick Navigation
- What are “Jump To” links?
- Benefits of “Jump To” links
- Steps on how to create “Jump To” links
- The HTML for a Anchor Tag Jump Link
- WordPress Page Jump Plugins
- Bonus Tip 1: Page Jump to the correct position
- Bonus Tip 2: Focus your SEO efforts to optimise existing pages
Now, what exactly are “Jump To” links?
“Jump to” links are links that when clicked, instantly bring the reader to the relevant part of the content that he’s most interested in (hence the ‘page jump’).
What’s even better is that these links do not require any extensive coding or plugin to implement (although you can still choose to use a plugin if you wish).
To do it manually, you only need very simple HTML knowledge to add a small bit of text that can be done in less than 2 minutes.
Talk about a quick SEO hack.
Well, in any case, the most important part is to start with the “Why” and understand the benefits that having “Jump To” links can bring to you and your blog.
Benefits of “Jump To” links
The subtle benefits that “Jump To” links bring you is that they will lead to an increase in user engagement on your page.
What this means is increased average time that a user spends on your page and reduced bounce rates.
Not to mention that this also helps with boosting a positive overall user experience when a reader is navigating your content.
The Google crawler bot will receive these positive signals and recognise that your page is relevant and provides value to the visitor.
Moreover, having the “Jump to” links also make it easier for the bot to crawl and index your page.
Steps on how to create “Jump To” links
To start creating “Jump To” links, you first have to decide what keywords or phrases you will want to optimise for.
Generally, I will recommend keeping it as straightforward and relevant as possible.
If you need ideas on the keywords and phrases to use in your “Jump To” links, what you can do is to scroll to the bottom of a Google search result page:
Using this example, you can get some ideas such as “How to create a link to jump to a specific part of a page” or “How to link to a specific part of a page html”.
Think of this process like coming up with a Contents page of a book.
You want to keep it succinct so it draws the reader’s attention instead of being too draggy with the words.
In other words, KISS – Keep It Short & Simple.
Once you are done with your “contents” page, it’s time to proceed with creating the “Jump To” link
The HTML for a Anchor Tag Jump Link
There are two parts to creating the Jump link.
The first part is the link in the content or overview section that will be used to “jump”.
Using this post itself as an example, the link will look like this:
<a href=”https://noviceaffiliate.com/seo-tip-6-use-jump-to-links-for-on-page-seo-optimisation/#identifier”>What are “Jump To” links?</a>
What this link does is that it looks for a HTML element with an ID of “identifier”, and then “jumping” over to it.
You can replace the word “identifier” with anything you want, although I usually keep it to just a number so it simply becomes #1.
You can replace the anchor text “What are ‘Jump To’ links” with your selected words and phrases from the previous segment.
Keep in mind that you cannot include any spaces in the identifier however.
You can choose to replace any spaces with a dash “-” instead.
The second part is the destination of the link or where you want the reader to be after clicking on the first link.
It will look something like this.
<h2 id=”identifier”>Benefits of “Jump To” links</h2>
This is where the reader will end up after clicking on the first link.
If you do not want to touch any code or HTML at all (don’t worry, it’s normal), you can consider using some of the free WordPress plugins instead.
WordPress Page Jump Plugins
The top two plugins which you can use to jump to that ideal place on your page are Page scroll to id and Scroll to Anchor.
Page scroll to id is by far the more popular plugin with over 90,000 installations compared to Scroll to Anchor’s 10,000.
This is how the interface for Page scroll to id looks like:
Both provides a smooth scrolling experience to the destination point compared to the sudden jump of the manual “Jump To” link.
Bonus Tip 1: Page Jump to the correct position
If you are using the manual method of adding the page, one of the more frustrating things you will encounter is in controlling the position of where the page jump ends up.
For example you can take a look below to see the difference with and without this bonus tip:
What you can do to make the page jump to the correct position is to change the final destination of your “Jump To” link to this short code snippet:
<div id=”identifier” style=”padding-top: 100px; margin-top: -100px;”></div>
Then, place the above code snippet just above your original final destination so it looks like this:
<div id=”identifier” style=”padding-top: 100px; margin-top: -100px;”></div>
<h2>Steps on how to create “Jump To” links</h2>
And you’re done.
This will ensure a nice page jump to your intended location and a good user experience for your reader.
