Anchor Text Optimization – Day 23

August 19, 2008 by  

Anchor text optimization is the KEY to SEO success, hands down! This is the one trick that most people don’t understand the significance of. Those that do can truly understand and utilize the power of SEO. What is an anchor text? Anchor text is the visible text of a hyperlink, for example a main anchor text for this website is Internet Marketing Blog. Here is how the anchor text is supplied for a link

<a href=”http://www.internet-marketing-data.com”>Internet Marketing Blog</a>

The Anchor Text is critically important in Search Engine Optimization

Google heavily weighs the anchor text in its algorithm for determining Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), other search engines also do but to a lesser extent. A great example of the power of the anchor text is with the Googlebomb that occurred on George Bush.

Googlebombing and How it Controlled Bush

In late 2003, the miserable failure Googlebomb took over the results on Google. The bomb was orientated towards the term “miserable failure” and directed towards George Bush’s biography page (www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html). Basically, whenever someone searched for that term his biography page was the first result.

No where on Bush’s biography page did the term Miserable Failure show up, not even in the title or the meta tag. That’s the power of the anchor text! The problem has since been corrected but I’m willing to bet that it was a manual override by Google. The consistent search engine placement in the past can be directly related to lots of incoming links (from bloggers, websites, and other sources) using the anchor text pointing towards the biography.

How to use Anchor Text Effectively

Anchor text is used to reflect the content of the page that it is linking to, for example if I was linking to this page my anchor text would be Anchor Text Optimization. that way I can target use the anchor text to describe the information found on this page, as well as the main keyword. This way I can link similar pages together and ‘share’ the wealth of the Pagerank.

For example consider PageRank as a large bowl of liquid, the ultimate goal is to contain the liquid on a page and or distribute it efficiently without leaking any of it. In order to contain it you need to make sure not to carelessly link to other outside websites, and control the ‘flow’ by using effective anchor text descriptions. Make sure that all links on your website that links to other pages on your site have effective ‘keywords’ in them.

Let’s continue with the idea of bass fishing, and let’s assume that your main landing page has a PR 6. It’s time to make sure that EVERYTHING on that page is spic and span and filtering out that PR to other pages on your website. Let’s pretend that there is a new bait thats revolutionary and you want to filter some of your main pages juice to the new Turbo Bait so that you can rank well for its release.

Create a landing page anchor link text as follows on your main Bass Fishing page linking to your new Turbo Bait review landing page.

<a href=”http://www.bassfishing.com/turbo-bait.html”>Turbo Bait</a>

Since you have cleaned up your main page and got rid of all excess links the weight of this link will be significant. As a result your new landing page, Turbo Bait, will see significant results. Now lets assume that you have the ability to receive incoming one way links to you new Turbo Bait landing page.

Make sure to switch up the anchor text atleast 30% of the time! Remember what I’ve always told you, Google likes natural and organic activity. We want your website to appear as natural as possible to Google and other search engines. Natural links mean that people genuinely find your website informative and link to it. Therefore each person linking to your new Turbo Bait landing page would use different anchor texts for the link. Not everyone is just simply going to link it as “Turbo Bait”, they may link it as “Mike’s Turbo Bait Review” or “Basshfishing.com Turbo Bait”. If you are able to control the anchor texts coming into your site, i.e. paid links, directories, etc. be sure to change the anchor text that you supply for those links. Change up the variation of the link, “Turbo Bait Review” or “Buy Turbo Bait”. That way you can really gain as much ‘juice’ as possible for your website.

Anchor Text Review

Google and many search engines rank anchor text optimization as one of the most important variables for SERPs. By using anchor text effectively when creating your linking structure and organizing incoming links you can quickly raise in the SERPs. Remember to change the anchor link text 30% of the time when you are actively finding one way links. Otherwise Google and other search engines may deem it unnatural and you won’t receive the full credit for the incoming link. So if your main keyword is “Turbo Bait” change up the incoming anchor link text as “Buy Turbo Bait” or “Turbo Bait Review”.

[tags]Anchor text optimization, search engine optimization anchor text, seo anchor text, anchor text help[/tags]

Comments

3 Responses to “Anchor Text Optimization – Day 23”

  1. Emanuel Rodrigues on August 19th, 2008 5:59 pm

    What is someone to do ? you knwo.

  2. Acco Rand on August 19th, 2008 5:59 pm

    I never understood the significance of using anchor text like this, I used to ‘spam’ almost all of the places I could with a single phrase that wasn’t even my targeted keywrod! Now I get the importance of switching it up.

  3. Jerry Beanter on August 19th, 2008 5:59 pm

    Fantastic info, I was looking for some anchor text info right about now. Appreciate all the hlp you have provided me.

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