Effective Anchor Text To Improve Rankings

posted by Ted on December 4, 2011

The ‘anchor text’ is the keyword or key phrase you use when linking from some another website to your own. This is the hyperlinked text that is visible to the human eye. In order to improve your Google search engine rankings, make sure you also focus on which anchor texts you are using when building links back to your website.

To see an example of how powerful this anchor text is, go to Google and do a search for the phrase “click here”. At the time of this writing, there are over 1 billion results when searching for that phrase. It would be almost impossible to get anywhere near the top of those results. This spot is currently held by the adobe site, due to the fact that many websites have linked to the adobe site with the phrase “click here”.

When you have the opportunity to add your own anchor text, make sure you choose the right phrase. You can choose your own text when submitting articles, social bookmarks, in the signature of your email, and countless other ways. Which of the following do you find more appealing?

• A basic link, such as www.logicpath.com
• A standard anchor text, like click here
• Or a descriptive anchor text Search Optimization

All of the above can link to the same website, but its probably safe to say the last one would have a higher click-through rate. Additionally, if the anchor text mirrors your website’s main keywords, it will also help to improve your website’s search engine ranking and be an important part of exactly how to get search results on Google for these keywords.

Here are some guidelines for effective anchor texts:

1. Use Multiple Anchor Texts: As mentioned before, you should be using your main keywords in your anchor texts. Make sure you vary them a little bit. Pick 3-5 of your primary phrases and use them all as anchor text on different sites. Having too many of the exact phrases pointing to your site might raise a red flag over at Google and they may even penalize your site. So use a lot of variations and different key phrases in your anchor text.

2. Choose your anchor texts carefully: This goes back to your keyword research. When doing that, you should have chosen the key phrases that are relative, popular, and without too much competition. If your they don’t have these qualities, building backlinks may not really help improve your rankings anyway. They must relate to your niche, must be used often in the search engines, and must not have TOO many companies competing for the same ones. Once you have chosen your keywords, use them as your anchor texts going forward.

Don’t limit yourself to just putting the anchor texts on a few sites that offer backlinks. You could write articles and distribute them to various article directories, submit your link to website directories, social bookmarking, comment on do-follow blogs, participate in relevant forums with your link in your signature, video and RSS fee submissions, and more. All of these strategies will help you to add link to google search as well as allow you to gain more awareness of your brand by using the proper anchor texts.

Every single anchor text you place out there will help in some way. Just remember – building a site that ranks high for your keywords takes time.  Improving your pagerank, google checker software, and other similar tasks are not something that you should obsess over.  Page rank is not something that just happens overnight, but if you’ve chosen the proper key phrases, use a few variations of them on different sites, and keep a consistent approach you will soon see your website moving up the rankings.

Related Post:  Benefits of SEO

Tags:backlinks,effective website,internet marketing,link building,search engine,seo,targeted marketing,website optimization