What is a Contextual Link?

Contextual links are a type of link that helps Google understand the relationship between two entities in your content. Visually it is a piece of clickable text placed in the body of a paragraph that contains similar ideas or context. They also help Google understand how relevant one piece of content is to another. These links are not as well known as other link types like in-link or out-link, but they can have a significant impact on how well your pages rank in search results. 

Contextual links work by assigning a specific link to an entity (for example, person, place, or thing) that frequently appears in your document. These entities are usually found with some sort of identifier – for example, “Dr. Jones’s Lab” – and these identifiers serve as triggers for contextual links. With contextual links, you assign a specific link to an entity that doesn’t have any other identifying information. For example, link context=” Dr. Jones’ Lab”>. In this example, the “Dr. Jones’s Lab” serves as the trigger for the contextual link because it frequently appears in your document without any additional identifying information. 

Ultimately, contextual links improve Google’s ability to understand what the document is about and how the different pieces relate to each other. The result is pages that rank better across all search engines than those without them.