Often newbies to SEO will ask us what are the top two of three things that they can do that will make the biggest impact on their SEO efforts? Well of course it isn’t quite so simple. When we are looking at a new client’s website or are revisiting one of our older sites we look first at title tags and then at the anchor text. Search Engine Optimization is significantly more complicated than that and by only focusing on just a couple of “fixes” will not shoot you to the top of the SERPs for your most valuable keyword phrases but these will certainly having you moving in the right direction..
SEOmoz.org does a yearly survey asking some of the top search optimization experts to rank the most important SEO factors and Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links is considered the most important factor. Unfortunately many site owners who are looking to improve their search rankings don’t even know what anchor text is. Anchor text is a relatively simple concept to understand.
What is Anchor Text?
The Search engine algorithms are programmed to look for various verb and noun patterns in copy text in order to determine what an individual web page is all about, but programs have been built to scam the robots by turning out tons of raw keyword loaded text. While it may not read well to a human it will be loaded with keywords for the bots. Because of this abuse in the past search engines also look to other sites (which have outbound links pointing to relevant sources of information) to better understand if your website should be trusted as a source of high quality content and to determine what each page on your site is about.
Google and the other search engines use this anchor text in their link analysis algorithms to determine web site page quality and relevancy.
Anchor text is the visible text of a link whether internal or external. For example, if I was linking to one of my favorite local search blogs, I might use the bloggers name as the anchor text.
Check out Mike Blumenthal’s blog.
If I wanted to maximize this link to Mike’s blog (as well improve the relevancy for my target audience), I would use a strong keyword phrase as my anchor text, for example:
For more on understanding Google Maps ….
A link to the website CheapPetStore.com with relevant keywords in the anchor text like discount pet supply or cheap pet supplies is more valuable than a link that says click here. Analyzing the words used in the anchor text links, along with which sites link to where, is one of the key metrics the search engines use it determining web site authority.
If you do a search in Google for “Discount Pet Supply”, you’ll see that the words “Pet Supplies” are also bolded in addition to the primary search phrase “Pet Supply”. The search engines understand that these words are interchangeable and mean the same thing, and so Cheap Pet Store is able to rank high for both of these keyword phrases.
What is the Ideal Anchor Text Length?
As shown above you want to use both semantically similar phrases and a fairly wide variety of keyword phrase variations so that your anchor text looks as natural as possible. Some people will try to stuff their anchor text with all of their important keyword phrases like this:
Pet supplies, discount pet meds, dog beds, reptile products, grooming supply
But that is not be a normal link pattern that webmasters or content developers would use. You are much better off using multiple shorter keyword phrase link groups than attempting to jam all of your most important keyword variations in every link. Google has reported that the average search query is four words and we have found that 2-4 word phrases make the most effective anchor text.
How does Anchor Text Benefit Your Search Engine Optimization?
The search engines consider links that appear inline (within a copy block) to be more important than links in columns or in sections of the page reserved for “favorite links” or “interesting links”. Why? Because if a particular web page is providing lots of relevant information on a subject and is citing other sources (say your website) in the natural flow of the conversation, then the search engines tend to reward those links. Remember that search engines want to optimize the search experience for their users and the greater the focus on a particular subject the more this creates value for their user (and your potential customer).
A solid link building strategy begins with exhaustive keyword analysis and identifying the keywords you want to rank highly on. There are multiple tools you can use for this keyword research. We have two favorites Google’s keyword tool and then the keyword suggestion tool that shows daily searches from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing side-by-side. No one tool is perfect but we feel that these two give us the best information.
Just as you did with your SEO efforts you want to rank for a variety of keyword phrases and link building occurs in multiple ways – internal linking, submitting to relevant directories, or getting links from other sites. Many outside sites will use a portion of your title tag for the anchor text so it is a good idea to have these pages tightly structured to maximize your anchor text and subsequent SEO opportunities.
For other potential link partners you may find that sending them all the code <a href=linkjuiceseo.com/best-keyword>best keyword</a> in order to control the anchor text with the landing page to be the easiest.
Remember as part of a good keyword strategy having all of your anchor text exactly the same for each of your links is not the best approach. Mix it up a little by using singular and plural versions or use a semantic variation. You will be rewarded with more long tail search queries as well as a more diverse keyword profile.
Are there other ways that you use anchor text?