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Posts Tagged ‘anchor text’
Friday, September 9th, 2011
SEOmoz used its Whiteboard Friday column this week to talk about the demise of exact match anchor text. I’m just curious if anyone else has thought about this.
The idea is that partial match anchor text will be the way search marketers build links in the future. In other words, if I want to rank for “SEO” as a key term, then I don’t have to make every link that points back to my website link for the specific term “SEO.” I can use other phrases like “SEO technique,” “this is great SEO,” and “small business SEO tactics.” In other words, the anchor text links rely in part upon the keyword I want to rank for rather than entirely upon that keyword.
I thought the best search engine marketers were already doing that. But maybe not.
Google has emphasized anchor text as a key ranking factor for years. SEOs have, for the most part, preached exact match anchor text. Now, SEOmoz, which has been one of those exact match proponents, is saying to do something else. The best practices are about to shift.
I can see the point. I think a part of the reason this shift is occurring is because the advent of social media. Google+ itself is changing the game for social media and for SEO. The question for search marketers, really, is this: To what degree will anchor text be important for SEO going into the future. Any ideas?
Tags: anchor text, link building, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
When you go about your link building campaigns, do you bother yourself with ensuring your links are varied in nature? That is, do you use the same anchor text all the time or do you strive to create a more diverse link portfolio? The truth is most SEOs only use one primary keyword for their anchor text.
Link diversity means several things. It isn’t all about anchor text. That’s only one part of the equation. The key is to build a link portfolio that looks natural.
Here are some things to think about in your attempts to build a solid link portfolio:
- Use between 10-25 different anchor texts for each web page you are targeting.
- Build your links from a lot of different types of websites (directories, blogs, forums, etc.) within your niche.
- You can also add a few links from outside of your niche if they are natural links.
- Don’t target only high PageRank sites; to build a solid link portfolio, you need links from websites with a varying degree of authority.
- Make sure some of your anchor text targets long tail keyword phrases while others target general phrases within your niche.
- You can also throw in a few non-keyworded links such as “click here” and “go to” links as those represent a different type of call to action.
- Don’t just link to your home page. In fact, most of your inbound links should point to an internal page.
A good link portfolio is diverse. That means targeting different types of websites for your links as well as different anchor texts.
Tags: anchor text, link building, link diversity, links
Posted in link building | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
Anchor text is a certain phrase that linkers, SEOs, and other Net citizens use to link from one page to another on the Internet. In other words, in this sentence, small business Internet marketing is the anchor text.
Why is anchor text important? Because search engine algorithms are based in part on them. Web pages that employ effective, non-spammy anchor text can rank higher for the targeted key phrase. As a website owner and a small business owner doing business online, you’ll need to learn how to employ effective anchor text.
Many SEOs claim that “white hat” SEO cannot produce good anchor text. For that, you need to engage in some “black hat” or “gray hat” practices. Those terms are in reference to what search engines consider viable ways to earn links. The “white hat” variety are approved by search engines as acceptable. “Black hat” techniques can get your website banned or de-listed from the search engines.
The following 5 methods of obtaining strong anchor text links are all white hat SEO techniques. They work and I highly encourage you to use them.
- Press releases – Submit a press release to a PR directory and make sure you use effective anchor text to promote the pages you want to promote. Those press releases will often be used exactly as submitted, with anchor text intact.
- Embeddable Content – Widgets, badges, and videos are three common types of embeddable content. You can create these with anchor text within the embedded content and if it isn’t spammy in nature, the search engines will honor those links.
- Directed Anchor Text – If you license or give away your content for use by others, you can require that links use specific anchor text. Place your own requirements and restrictions on content you license or give away.
- Biographical Text - If you do speaking engagements, guest posts, engage in social media, or participate in activities that provide you opportunities to have a bio published, use a standard bio that contains link anchor text. It’s a good way to earn hundreds or thousands of anchor text links.
- Be A Guest Writer – A popular new way to build links now is to guest blog or guest write for another website. You can often link to your own website with the anchor text of your choice.
Anchor text is not hard to earn. You do have to go about it in a smart way, but the principles are embedded in the nature of the Web.
Tags: anchor text, link building, SEO
Posted in link building | 1 Comment »
Saturday, December 4th, 2010
New content writers are often overwhelmed at all the things to think about when writing content for their websites and blogs: Keywords, anchor text, alt text, social media links, inbound directory links, the list goes on. Anchor text is one of the most basic concepts of content development, and it doesn’t take much to understand it.
By definition, anchor text is the word or phrase used to link from one page to another.
In other words, this phrase is anchor text.
I linked the above phrase back to this post so if you click it you’ll end up right back here. Typically, however, you’ll link to another page on the Web. The anchor text you choose to link from Page A to Page B can help you with your SEO – that is, if you do it right, then your linked-to page can gain some ranking juice for the search engine results pages.
When selecting your anchor text, you want to choose a word or phrase that is relevant to the page you are linking to. In other words, if the topic of discussion is search engine optimization as it is with this blog post, then you’ll want to use anchor text related to that discussion. The previous link – using “search engine optimization” as the anchor text – does this well.
Notice how the page being linked to is about search engine optimization and conversion optimization? Either one of those phrases would have been good anchor text. I chose “search engine optimization.” By using a phrase that is relevant to the page I linked to, the anchor text does more to help that page rank better in the search engines. It’s a simple principle, but it’s also a principle that is quite effective when done properly over time and across many web pages.
Tags: anchor text, search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
Link structure is important for a website. It does more than just lead your site visitors from one page to another. The way you build your website does two things, primarily.
- First, it tells your site visitors which pages are most important. If you have five pages that link from off your home page and each of them have five pages linking off of them then that tells your site visitors that those five pages linking from the home page are a higher priority than the other pages. Otherwise, you would have made them all equal.
- Another thing that your internal links do is provide the search engines with a crawl path. Each of your pages, if linked from another page on your site, will be crawled by the search engines and indexed according to their content. By building your site structure a certain way you tell the search engine robots which pages to crawl first and which ones to crawl more often. You also give them clues as to which pages are most important for each of your keywords.
Keywords within your links are very important. You want the majority of your links pointing to a particular page on your site, no matter which page they are linking from, to use the same anchor text. Anchor text is the word for the words you use to link with. For instance, if you place the words “small business” around the a href tag, the tag used to signify a hyperlink, then that is your anchor text.
Your site’s link structure is very important for ranking purposes. It’s also very important for driving traffic to the pages you want traffic to go. Many new webmasters overlook link structure when building their website and this is a huge mistake. It’s one of the most important things to consider.
Tags: anchor text, link structure, traffic, website content, website visitors
Posted in website development | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
Most people realize that link building is a good way to get a little extra search engine attention, but did you know that you don`t have to rely entirely on outside linkage?
Deep linking, or linking to pages within your own website or blog, is also a good method of link building that will impress the search engines. While you might be aiming for better SEO, keep in mind that it also helps visitors to your site find other pages and information on your site.
If you are reading through an interesting article and find a link to something else that is interesting, chances are you`ll follow it. The same goes for the majority of your website visitors. If you want to increase the usefulness of your business site, make it easy for your human visitors to find more on the topic they are searching for.
Your anchor text matters here. Make sure that you are linking using relevant words, like I just did here. This is useful for people and search engines and will help with SEO, as well.
Tags: anchor text, link building, SEO
Posted in link building | No Comments »
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Anchor text is what you need when dealing with link building for your business, to help increase the amount of hits you receive. It`s very simple to incorporate and can do wonders for your search engine rankings.
Link building is an activity that you need to be participating in regularly if you want great search engine results. You`ll find that using some great anchor text with well placed keywords will help.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Keep anchor text relevant. Have a few keywords that you can interchange, but don`t use them out of place.
- Mix it up. Using the exact same anchor text is a sure way to get slapped by Google, so mix it up. For example, you might use, “Christmas cookie recipes” for one article and “recipes for Christmas cookies” in another.
- Go slowly. There are services out there that claim to build hundreds of links immediately, but this isn`t what you want. Link building should be natural looking or, once again, the search engines will penalize you.
Keeping your link building natural and changing the anchor text around is the best way to go about gaining search engine popularity. Combined with other SEO techniques, it can be invaluable.
Tags: anchor text, link building, links, search engine
Posted in link building | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Your anchor text has a huge bearing on SEO for your small business website. Dozens of people have tested the theories on anchor text SEO and found that it is extremely valuable.
There are two types of anchor text that we`ll be looking at today. The first is external linking. When another website or blog links to you, the anchor text that they use is very important. This is where it really pays off to request specific anchor text. If you have 50 blogs linking to you with the words “Car repair”, then you`ll do far better than a site that has no incoming links with that anchor text.
The second type of anchor text is internal. When you link to your own pages or blog posts, use your keywords as anchor text. This will help boost the SEO of your entire business website. It`s a very useful method of increasing inbound links, as well, but the anchor text makes the links that much more valuable.
There are a variety of ways that you can use anchor text to enhance your SEO, but just using your keywords in the anchor text is a great way to start.
Tags: anchor text, business, SEO, website
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 1 Comment »
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