Anchor text, for those who are unaware, is the clickable text part of a link. It is a message to users and the search engines, telling them what they should find if they actually click the link. But all too often, the only anchor text you get is “click here”. This is not only unhelpful to users, but it is a total waste of a link that could be helping to boost your SEO rankings for a keyword. It kind of counts as a vote, telling Google you are voting for that website to show up for that specific term. Let us examine a few points of anchor text that makes it a powerful tool for SEO:
1. Choosing Your Anchor Text
If you are inserting the anchor text directly on your website, you will need to use the appropriate hyperlink reference tag. Here is an example of how to create your link:
<a href=”www.mydomain.com”>Anchor Text Here</a>
The anchor text portion will be the only part users can see, and will become the blue hyperlink. Some content management systems have a link button you can click to create links, rather than needing to write out the tags.
If you are posting on someone else’s website, you may not be able to choose your anchor text, so you can either try inserting the HTML, or asking them if they will activate certain anchor text for you.
2. Anchor Text Should be a Description of What You Will Find if You Click
The purpose of anchor text is mainly to tell a user what will be found if they click the link. So what are you telling the user, and thereby the search engines they will find if you use the anchor text “click here”? Nothing at all. Google uses anchor text as one factor in their algorithms of deciding what terms you should rank for. If you use “click here” as anchor text, you are telling Google your website should rank for the term “click here”, which I am guessing is not what your website is about. Try using targeted anchor text, such as a product name, or a keyword.
3. Is Anchor Text Really That Important?
Yes. Anchor text can have a powerful effect on where your website ranks. It is for precisely this reason that some malicious individuals have been able to Google bomb other’s websites. Google bombs show that you can get just about any website to rank for just about any keyword on Google, just by linking to it enough times with the correct anchor text.
The lesson of the day, then, is this: Do not overlook the importance of anchor text! It can make or break your SEO results, and can be one thing that sets you above your competitors.
Linx Boss came highly recommended by several of the sites ranking on the first page of Google search results for “link building” so we decided to see what they were all about. When testing them out, right off the bat we noticed several good things. For one, they have excellent videos including one right on the home page. They also have a good FAQ section where it even invited you not to sign up for the service if you were expecting to go from unranked to the front of the SERPs within a month. We like it when companies explain upfront that results take some sweet time.
As we set up our first site for back link building within their system we had a few setbacks. If you don’t watch the tutorial videos very carefully you can get lost quickly. The other thing is their interface is built on adobe flash. This would be ok except apple device users could have trouble accessing their accounts.
We’re going to watch the site we added very carefully over the next few weeks to see if they actually do anything that works.
If you have any information about this company we invite you to comment. You can also visit their official site for more information.
11/22/2010 UPDATE:
A couple weeks ago we started testing the Linx Boss link building service on a site called weightlosswand.com. The site already had a decent link profile, but had been stuck on the 5th and 6th pages of search results for it’s major terms for several months. We decided to see if Linx Boss could help it get over the hump. Oh and we didn’t want to make it too easy on them so we asked them to take us from page 6 to the top of the first for “weight loss.”
Today we are surprised to report that the site they have been working on for only a few weeks, weightlosswand.com, has hit the first page. We looked over the links they built and all of them look solid. In a fairly short period of time they built over 900 backlinks for us on blogs with a Google page rank of at least 2 or more.
We are traditionally skeptics in a market that certainly warrants it, but Linx Boss has certainly earned some credibility in our eyes. They are one of the few services we can confidently recommend.
Gaining back links is essential to good SEO, but hours (in many cases weeks or months) can be wasted building thousands of terrible links when maybe all you needed was a hundred good ones.
What makes a link good? In terms of value, you can throw out image links right away. The most valuable links are the one that replicate themselves and come from a decent site. The easiest way to get a link like that is to acquire a piece of digital real estate on the sidebar of a good sized blog. If you can get a text link in the sidebar of another site, that link is usually replicated on every single page of that site. Translation: 1 sidebar link = as many links are there are pages of that site. This is huge. Footer links typically function much the same. The only difference being that they are not quite as prominent.
A well rounded link building campaign should consist of building several types of links. Go ahead and submit to directories, bookmark your site pages, and get text links embedded wherever you can. However, remember to put the most effort where it will do the most good. Make deals with other site owners and do whatever you have to to acquire some of those valuable replicated links. As always we’re here to help if you want to pass on some of the work.
When beginning your SEO campaign or even just expanding your current one, it’s important to define your goals and not move onto lofty ambitions before you’re ready. We recommend the three tier approach.
The three tier approach means separating your campaign into three major areas and then committing your resources to them in sequence. For example: Lets say you run a paragliding school and your ultimate goal is to obtain a top three Google spot for the term “paragliding.” Paragliding would become your third tier keyword, and you would set that on the back burner until you had reached your first and second tier goals. What are those you ask? Well a good idea for a second tier keyword in this case may be “paragliding school.” It is significantly less competitive than just “paragliding” alone and much more specific to what you are doing. The volume of searches may be far less, but you have to work up to your ultimate goal and this may be a good via point.
Now we just need to establish a starting point and choose a first tier key phrase. A good idea in this case may be something like “best paragliding school” or “paragliding school {your state/city}.”
Your campaign tiers should now look something like this:
1st Tier – Best Paragliding School
2nd Tier – Paragliding School
3rd Tier – Paragliding
As you are building links and optimizing be sure to follow your plan in sequence and exercise some self control in not going after your highest tier until you have achieved your goals for the lower tiers. When you have dominated this set of keywords you are ready to take on a new set. You could then take on a new third tier goal like “extreme sports” and come up with some new first and second tiers to help you get there.
SEO has been and always will be about strict methods and patience. If you have questions about your campaign, please call us and we would love to talk.
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