Using Link Anchor Text For SEO
This is the first in what will be a series of articles covering different aspects of search engine optimization in greater detail than I have covered before. I have mentioned link anchor text a few times in past search engine articles so I thought it would be a good place to start. With more room I can explain exactly what it is and why it is a valuable tool when it comes to optimizing your sites for search engines.
Optimizing for search engines is kind of like doing a big puzzle. There are a lot of little parts that, once put together, add up to something big and useful. Link anchor text is one of the more important parts of that puzzle. Plainly put, link anchor text is the text that is actually linked. For example if you have the phrase, “go here for more lesbian amateurs,” on your site “go here” is the link anchor text because it is the text that is linked.
Link anchor text is important because it tells the search engines what you are linking to and how people are linking to you and they use that information when they assign you a ranking. There are two basic types of link anchor text, on site and incoming.
ON SITE LINK ANCHOR TEXT
This is simply the text that is your site that you have linked to outgoing sites like link trade partners or your sponsors. The basic idea is that you want your outgoing links to reflect what your site is all about. Take the above example for instance. If you are trying to optimize your site for the keywords “lesbian amateurs” then you would want to change the link anchor text so that is looks like this, “ go here for more lesbian amateurs.” Now you have an outgoing link on your site that has your primary keywords in it. This tells the search engines that you are linking to other lesbian amateur sites, so your site must then be – at least somewhat – about lesbian amateurs.
You don’t want every instance of the keywords on your site to be linked because the search engines may see this as being spammy. If you have the phrase “lesbian amateurs” 10 times on a page, don’t link all 10 of them. Linking a couple of them will work just fine. I also suggest that you link a couple of typically related pieces of text on your site as well. For example link just the word “lesbian” and maybe the word “pussy” or “dildo” or whatever you may have on the site that commonly is associated with lesbians. If you do this it will help you improve your rankings with the smaller, lesser searched terms while you work on ranking for your main term. If someone searches for “lesbian pussy” or “lesbian dildo” you may find yourself getting ranked well for that and even though there may not be many searches for that, it is free, very targeted, traffic.
INCOMING LINK ANCHOR TEXT
This form of link anchor text is actually a little more important than the on site text because it tells the search engines how and why other people are linking to you. When someone links to your site the search engines see it as a “vote” for your site. If they link to you using favorable keywords then it is like a “strong vote.” For example if I link to the site above using the text “click here” it is an incoming link to your site, but it doesn’t tell the search engines why I linked to your site. If I link to your site using the phrase “lesbian amateurs” now it tells the search engines that I am linking to your site because it has lesbian amateurs on it. As more and more sites link to you using your desired keywords the search engines will start to note this and it will help them to determine that your site is a quality “lesbian amateur” site.
It’s not a bad idea to vary your keywords a little bit when getting incoming links. If you are working in a less competitive keyword, the same keywords should be fine because you won’t have that many incoming links, but if you are going to work in a competitive keyword then you will need a lot of incoming links and having them all look identical could start to look a little bit spammy. If you have several similar phrases you use to link to your site it could help you out a lot. For example you could use: “lesbian amateurs,” “sexy amateur lesbians.” “real lesbian amateurs,” “hot amateur lesbians,” “teen lesbian amateurs.” With these you still get your keywords in there, but they all look a little bit different and this makes your incoming links look more organic.
THE WHOLE PUZZLE
Link anchor text along with a good keyword campaign really can aide you in getting higher rankings. I can personally attest to the importance of link anchor text. I have a blog that was ranking in Google for my desired keywords, but I was stuck between 20 and 25 in the rankings. I started linking my on site anchor text (I already had good incoming anchor text) and soon I started climbing the rankings. With no more incoming links added I moved into the top 5 for my desired keywords and have stayed there now for 6 months. I have also taken my own advice and link similar terms and now I see a smaller number of searchers finding my site for the more obscure versions of my keywords. Nothing else on the site changed which goes to show the power of the onsite link anchor text.
You can look at the incoming and outgoing link anchor texts as being halves of a book that tell the search engines a story. With our earlier example you can say that when a site links to your site using the terms “lesbian amateur” (or one of your variations) it tells the search engines that they like your site and they are linking to it because it is a lesbian amateur site. When the search engines reach your site they see you are linking to other sites with the text “lesbian amateurs” so your site must be about lesbian amateurs because the links coming to it and going from it are about this. If you have one and not the other it only tells the search engines half the story and you are not getting the full benefit of the search engines.
Coming up with good link anchor text is not always easy, but when you do it well it is something that can greatly benefit you and your site.
Reader Comments: (1 posts)
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Stafon says: Never would have thunk I would find this so inidpsensable. |
October 29th, 2011 at 1:57pm EST Rating:  |
