What if I were to tell you that one of the most important principles of search engine optimisation is so simple you that you will kick yourself for not realising it before? I'm talking about something called anchor text optimisation. The basic idea behind anchor text optimisation is that when one website links to another using a text link, the text that the web designer uses to form the link is called the 'anchor text' i.e. someone linking to this article would probably use something like 'anchor text optimisation article' or 'anchor text optimisation guide'.
Why Is This Important?
You may well ask. Well here it is. Behind the scenes search engines look at the anchor text of the links that point to your site and use it as one of the major factors in deciding what your site is about and what search terms your site is relevant to. Let’s take a look at an example. If I were to set up a website discussing the advantages and disadvantages of anchor text optimisation, I would want to collect as many incoming links from other SEO related sites as possible that contained the key phrase 'anchor text optimisation' in the text of the incoming link. If I have 100 incoming links from related websites that all have 'anchor text optimisation' in the link text then the search engines can conclude that my site is indeed related to the topic of 'anchor text optimisation'. When you combine this with the fact that my site is also optimised for my target key phrase then the search engines can clearly see that my site is all about that particular topic.
But Why Do Search Engines Place So Much Weight On Anchor Text
When you stop and think about it, a web designer can put whichever key phrases he likes into the content on his website so these on page search engine optimisation factors are very easy to manipulate and very easy to change. Links on other people’s websites however, are very difficult to manipulate. The owner of each site has a choice of the text that they can use to form the link. So by looking at all the links that point at your site, the search engines can make a more accurate and unbiased decision about what the internet community are saying your site is all about.
An Extreme Example of Anchor Text Optimisation
If you visit Google and enter the key phrase 'click here', you will find that the result that is returned is the Adobe Acrobat Reader download page. Furthermore if you look through the page you won't see the key phrase 'click here' on there anywhere! So what's happening here you will probably ask. Well when someone puts a PDF file on their website, they invariably but a link next to it that says something like:
This file requires adobe acrobat. To download a free copy of adobe acrobat please 'click here'.
The anchor text on the links to the adobe acrobat download page is invariably 'click here'. Consider the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of links pointing at this page and I’m sure you can understand that the search engines are getting a pretty strong indicator that the adobe acrobat download page is in fact about the key phrase 'click here'!
Conclusion:
Anchor text optimisation - although a very simple principal is very, very, important to your search engine optimisation success and in my professional opinion is just as important as having the right target keywords written into the content on your website. The best advice I can give is to decide which key phrases you intend to target and set about obtaining as many links as possible with that key phrase in the anchor text of the incoming link.
Stuart provides search engine optimisation in Barnsley, Yorkshire, UK. Stuart specialises in SEO in barnsley for businesses of all types.
Search engine optimization comprises of On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization. As of now Off Page optimization has higher significance than On Page optimization for search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN.
What is Off Page Optimization? • Improving Link Popularity • Using keyword rich anchor text • Improving Google PR
What is Link Popularity & why is it required? Link Popularity is defined as the number of incoming links your site domain has in each search engine. This is like the number of positive votes your site domain has on the internet. So, higher the number should be your primary goal. But you should make a note here that having a higher number of incoming links is not just enough. The quality of the incoming links matters a lot. Search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN would rank your website higher or lower in the search engine results depending on your link popularity.
How to check your Link Popularity? In the search bar of any of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN type the following and press enter: link:http://www.yoursitedomain.com (Please replace “yoursitedomain” with your website’s URL)
This would give you an idea as how many websites on the internet linking to your website.What is link building & what are the different types?
Link building is the off page optimization strategy to improve your link popularity. There are basically two types of link building.
• Reciprocal Link Building Reciprocal linking means there is one incoming and one outgoing link, i.e. there is link exchange between your site and the linking site. You first link to the other website and request the webmaster if they would like to link back.
• Non reciprocal Linking Non reciprocal linking is to have only the incoming link without your site linking back. This would carry more value than the reciprocal link. But, this does not mean that reciprocal linking is not worth to do. It has it’s importance. Non reciprocal linking is better but a little tougher to achieve.
How to do reciprocal link building? You need to find the websites which has similar theme as yours but not direct competition and request a link exchange. Once you find the right websites then you add a link to these websites on your links page and send an individual email to each one of these website owners. Now, you should take care of the anchor text, also known as linking text. This is the text which is displayed on the other website linking to your website. The anchor text should be the best keyword describing your website and it has high value attached to it.
These are the three basic things you would need before you request a link exchange with the link partner websites.
Title: This is the anchor textURL: The webpage URL you want the link to.Description: Describing the purpose of your website in brief and do not forget to mention your keywords.
The next thing you should look into is the Google PR (Page Rank) of the linking webpage. The higher the Google PR the higher link value you get which would be converted to higher rankings in Google search engine.
Now, internet is an ocean and finding these websites, their Google PR and emailing them is a tough manual process. You can do this but may take years before you can build decent link popularity. Is there a way out?
Yes! you bet! There are quite a few SEO Software tools which would help you implement reciprocal link building. But making the decision as which SEO Software tool is right for you is the BIG question.
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