Web Hosting Guide, Everything for Your Online Business

Link Anchor Text and Search Engine Optimization

Domain Hosting For quite some time, it has been a well known fact that in order to rank well with the search engines, a page must have a large number of inbound links (link popularity). However, a not so well known fact is that the wording of those links (the link anchor text) is also very important. In fact, there are strong indications that search engines are nowadays paying a great deal of attention to the anchor text of the links pointing to your site.

consultancy's epic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Best Practice Guide. It explains how to get the best from your link building strategy, in detail, and using examples. So what is link building and why does it matter Well, simply put link building is about securing quality links from quality sites, where quality equals relevancy, context, descriptive link text (aka anchor text) and authority. External links can be tremendously powerfyul in competitiv.....

Business Hosting Provider Web To give you an example of how important link anchor text is, let's suppose that you run a web design site, and that you want it to rank very high with the search engines for the search term "web design". If you had 100 links pointing to your homepage, and the anchor text of all of them said "click here", they wouldn't tell the search engines a whole lot about your site. The search engines will therefore have trouble knowing that your site is about web design (they will have to try other ways to find out, like crawling the text of your page), and most likely won't assign your page a good position in the search results pages.

Building links is essential to gain more traffic and obtain a high ranking on search engines. But building links which are effectively optimized can score you extra points. Search engines analyze a link based on several factors, one being the text of the link itself. If your linking text, commonly referred to as anchor text, contains relevant keywords it indicates clearly what the link is connecting to. Likewise, your title text for each page should be clearly defined with relevant keywords.

Ecommerce Hosting Email However, if instead of "click here", the anchor text on those links said "web design", the search engines would easily conclude that your site is an authority on web design, and will give your site a high ranking.

Besides, Anchor Text gives a real clue to the search engines regarding the content of the web page it links to. The right Anchor Text improves your website¯ search engine ranking. That¯ why it¯ imperative to pick the Anchor Text astutely.

Cheap Web Hosting Another proof that search engines pay a lot of attention to the link anchor text is the fact that most companies rank very high when the search term is their company name (a company's name is normally the most popular anchor text used to link to its website).

If you had a site on marriage counselling and you were also using those words as keywords you would include them in the link anchor text from other web sites pointing to pages of your site. For example, the anchor text should read something like, "For rmation go to marriage counselling, with the link on the words marriage counselling, The search engines will value this type of link more than one that reads, "For rmation on marriage counselling go to www.thissite.com with the link being on thissite.com.

Small Business Hosting That is why you must take every opportunity to influence the anchor text used to link to your pages. Your anchor text should always include your preferred keywords (the words you think most people will type in the search engine's search box to look for your page). While you won't be able to influence the anchor text used by people who spontaneously link to you, there are other instances in which you do have control, for example, when you list your site in directories.

Aplus.Net Introduces Search Engine Booster Aplus.Net offers service to assist businesses with search engine marketing San Diego, CA May 9 ^th, Leading web host and online presence solutions provider, Aplus.Net, today announced the launch of a brand new search marketing service, Search Engine Booster. The new service enables customers to receive expert assessment of their websites with respect to search engine optimization issues. The program is designed to help small businesses achieve optimal placements among search engine result listings and thus increase qualified website traffic.

Web Hosting Domains You can also control the anchor text used by your reciprocal link partners. The best way to make sure they will use the right anchor text, is by providing them not only with your URL and your site name, but with the exact HTML code you want them to use to link to you, including, of course, your preferred link anchor text. (Tip: if your company name doesn't include your keywords but you still want to use mention it in your anchor text, do so within a phrase that contains your keywords).

Web Hosting Domain Names Editor's Note: To emphasize how important link anchor text is, consider this example: a group of bloggers who are not too fond of President Bush, started linking to his biography page by using the link text "miserable failure", to the point that Bush's biography was listed in the number one spot in Google's SERPs for that keyphrase. You can read BBC's article on the subject: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm

Domain Name Registration
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hosting Web Hosting You can freely reprint this article provided that you include the following resource box:

Web Hosting Plans Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest

http://www.theinternetdigest.net a website and newsletter that gives you useful advice on web design and Internet marketing, one free tip at a time

[ Comment, Edit or Article Submission ]