SEO - Backlink Anchor Text Optimization

Posted on January 9, 2008
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization |

Backlink Anchor TextSEO & Anchor Text Optimization. One of the things I learned about in Marhgil Macuha’s recent mini-SEO competition is the importance of backlinks and the backlink anchor text in search engine optimization. There are lots of things you can do on a web page to optimize it’s position in the search engine rankings, but equally important (or perhaps even more important) are the off-page techniques you employ.

Chief amongst these is obtaining backlinks. Baclinks are hyperlinks from other web pages into your own web page. The number and quality of these has a big bearing in where you rank in search results. And anchor text links will tell the search engines what keywords you should rank for.

What is anchor text?

Anchor text is the visible text that’s displayed when you place a hyperlink in a web page. It’s the text a reader clicks on when they want to follow a hyperlink. For example, if you wanted to visit the Monetize Your Blog home page, you would click on the Monetize Your Blog hyperlink. In this case, the anchor text is Monetize Your Blog, but the actual url is http://www.monetizeyourblog.net/. For this example I’ve used the title of my blog, but I could have used anything I wanted in the anchor text. I could have used make money blogging or make money online (or anything else).

How To Create Anchor Text.

In its simplest form, the anchor text HTML code is as follows:

<a href=”http://www.monetizeyourblog.net/”>Monetize Your Blog</a>

where Monetize Your Blog is the anchor text and http://www.monetizeyourblog.net/ is the url the anchor text links to.

Most blog platforms will generate this code for you via an anchor text tool or a button on the user interface. However, knowing the HTML code behind it can sometimes be useful (if you want to change anchor text for example).

Why Is Anchor Text SEO Important?

Search engines use the anchor text of inbound links to a web page (among other things) to determine what that page is about. The idea is that webmasters will normally define anchor text which is relevant to the page being linked to, so search engine algorithms have started using anchor text link analysis to rank search results. Other factors are also important. The pagerank of the linking page and the overall relevance of that page’s content are also taken into account.

Google has essentially confirmed the importance of HTML anchor text to the ranking algorithm in this discussion of googlebombs. In the discussion they talk about having changed the algorithm to lessen the impact of googlebombs ( a googlebomb is when a bunch of people try to get website ranked for an unrelated search term by linking in with the search term in the anchor text).

Optimize Your Internal Anchor Text Link Structure First.

The easiest place to start optimizing your anchor text is with the hyperlinks within your own website. Each time you link to a page on your site, use appropriate keywords for that page in your anchor text. You should already know what keywords you’re targeting for particular pages, so you should use variations of those in your anchor text.

If you aren’t using many internal links, now is the time to start. Internal links help to build and maintain your blog’s pagerank and help to keep visitors on your site. As well as having a popular posts section on your sidebar and related posts section, consider linking back to old posts from within your articles (which reminds me - I haven’t linked to my Paris Hilton post for a while).

How To Anchor Text External Links Correctly.

You can’t control what other bloggers put in the anchor text when they link to you, can you? While this may be true, you can have some influence over how other people link to you. You will need to learn how to build links using anchor text terms appropriately.

1. Make Your Title Keyword Rich And Linkworthy:

There are actually 2 parts to this. Firstly, try to use titles which people are likely to put in their anchor text. Make the title catchy and descriptive. Try to structure it such that it will fit into the flow of a sentence or paragraph being written by another blogger. Make it easy for them to just insert your title when they link in.

And make sure you use your keywords in the title. Apart from the direct seo benefits of including your keywords in the title of your posts, having a keyword rich title will benefit you when another blogger uses that title in the anchor text of inbound links.

2. Ask Other Bloggers To Put Relevant Keywords In Their Anchor Text:

When exchanging (or soliciting) links, don’t be afraid to let other blogger’s know what you would like in your anchor text. I know others have asked it of me, and normally I’m quite happy to use whatever anchor text they provide (within reason). I’m sure you will find most bloggers equally accommodating.

And this raises another interesting point - keywords in the title of your blog. When starting your blog, give careful consideration to what keywords you will target. Then use them in your title. This will naturally increase the relevance of the anchor text in inbound links to your blog. When someone adds you to their blogroll, or just links to the home page of your blog, it increases the chances of getting relevant anchor text.

Perfect Anchor Text - A Word Of Caution.

John Chow’s backlink promotion penalty experience has taught us all a lesson. The theory is that Google caught up with John because in his promotion he asked everyone to use the same backlink text - make money online.

So make sure the anchor text is varied. Use your keywords, but vary the way they are combined or use long tail variations. Unless you are buying a lot of links, or involved in some other strategy to artificially boost backlink numbers, this shouldn’t be a problem. As people link in they will naturally use different variations of your keywords. It’s when the anchor text is always identical that Google become suspicious (especially if it is the coveted make money online keyword).

Where Can I Find A Backlink Anchor Text Checker?

I’ve written about Google Webmaster Tools before. Here is yet another use you can put it to, because it includes an anchor text analyzer. The What Googlebot Sees page under Statistics will give you an idea of the anchor text others are using when they link to your site.

Do Other Bloggers A Favor.

This works both ways. Now that you know how to use anchor text and its purpose in search engine optimization, we can help each other out by taking more care with our anchor text. When you link out to other bloggers, don’t use anchor text like “click here” or “read this article”. It adds nothing to the value of the link you are giving out (and some would say devalues it).

It would be much more beneficial to write something like “refer to this article on anchor text” or “read about backlink anchor text optimization“. Make sure you include relevant keywords in the anchor text of your hyperlink. This wont cost you anything and it will help the recipient of the link by assisting with higher search engine rankings So when you link to this article think about what you put in the anchor text (only joking…).

Technorati Tags: anchor text, backlinks, SEO




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5 Responses to “SEO - Backlink Anchor Text Optimization”

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  4. Pete on January 25th, 2008 9:59 pm

    Excellent intro on anchor links, thanks so much for posting this.

  5. Brett on January 26th, 2008 12:05 am

    You’re welcome Pete. Thanks for the feedback.

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