Show Anchors makes use of page anchors to allow in-page linking to contents. It is necessary that the page supports and uses the HTML anchor tag. Most WordPress blogs and many other sites do that.

The program is available as a bookmarklet which should work in most modern web browsers and as a Firefox add-on.

Just drag and drop the Show Anchors bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar or the browser’s bookmarks. Click on the link when you are on a page where you want to create an in-page link for bookmarking or distribution. This displays all anchors available on that particular page giving you the option to right-click an anchor to copy the link or add the link to the browser’s bookmarks.

The copied links work in all modern browsers and do not require installation of the bookmarklet or Firefox add-on.

The firefox add-on Show Anchors works pretty much the same way. It adds an option to the Firefox right-click menu to show all anchors. Once selected all anchors on the page are displayed again. The program will display an on-mouse-over context menu with options to copy, bookmark or send the anchor or switch to the next anchor on the page.

The Firefox version of Show Anchors will display anchors on all pages of the domain once selected. Users who do not need the anchors anymore need to select the option again from the browser’s context menu to disable the showing of anchor tags.

Firefox users can download the Show Anchors add-on from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. The bookmarklet which is compatible with all modern browsers is available on this page.

Most webmasters have the decency to cite their source when they write about a topic that they have encountered on another website which is a good and honest thing to do. Almost all of them on the other hand use anchor names like via or sitename to link back to the website which is probably helping a new blog that wants to establish a name for itself and might help experienced visitors identify the source by reading the name.

It is however not really helping the webmaster who is maintaining the source website.Most search engines (still) rely heavily on anchor names. What you do is you tell the search engines that the source is about via or the sitename but do not give the search engine a single hint as to what the article is really about.

Lets take one basic example. Ghacks writes a post about the latest Firefox update. A brand new story that has not reached the masses yet. Instead of linking to that story using via or ghacks webmasters would do me a much bigger favor by using anchor names like firefox, firefox 3 or firefox update because this would give my article more weight in the search engines.

I have therefor decided to link to other blogs that I cite in my articles properly from now on. The link will contain one major keyword (a keyword can be comprised of one or multiple words) that I have identified in the post on the other website. This will help the other website in their search engine rankings in the major search engines. I will furthermore contact webmasters who link to my articles and ask them if they would like to consider doing the same.