Jump Link

What Is a Jump Link?

Jump links not only improve navigation on long pages, they can also appear directly in Google search results as sitelinks and thus increase your click-through rate. A table of contents with jump links on long content pages demonstrably lowers bounce rate and increases dwell time. For AI search engines, they also make it easier to extract specific information from your content.

A jump link is an anchor link that leads directly to a specific section or a defined position within a page, rather than always loading the page from the beginning. A jump link uses the hash symbol (#) followed by an anchor number or ID name, for example www.example.com/page#chapter-2. This allows users to quickly jump to relevant information and significantly improves user experience — especially on longer pages with many contents and sections.

Technically, a jump link is created by an HTML anchor element with a unique ID: <h2 id="chapter-2">Chapter 2</h2>. The link itself then points to this ID. Google recognizes and indexes these anchors, especially when they are meaningfully named. Internal jump links contribute to improving crawlability and can also be used in table of contents navigation elements. They also make it easier to link directly to specific positions on a page — for example in featured snippets or People Also Ask results.

For SEO practice, it is recommended to implement a table of contents with jump links on longer pages (over 2,000 words). This improves user guidance, lowers bounce rate, and increases dwell time. Jump link IDs should also be meaningful and consistent — ideally automatically generated from headings. In modern CMS systems, this can be easily implemented. For anchor text within backlinks, jump links can also be relevant, as they provide more precise contextual information.