Crafting Anchor Text for your Website

Tuesday, March 2. 2010

I've talked in another article about the importance of anchor text in backlinks, actually looking at that article from early 2008 I'm feeling a little awkward even admitting I wrote it, but in the world of SEO a lot of things change, and so have I.

Yup, in two years I've gone from mega SEO fanboy, to really not caring a heck of a lot, let me tell you why. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is more about common sense than anything, and you can optimize the crap out of your pages, but in the end if the other site has more backlinks than you, they're going to beat you in the SERPs.

Sure there are other factors at play like authority, age etc, but in the cold hard light of reality, he who has more and better backlinks wins. This is why it is so important to get those backlinks, and why it is so important to make sure they are phrased in a way that appeals to search engines - coincidentally, this also helps human readers so it's a win/win for everyone. We call that crafting your anchor text.
Within a link there are two main components, the URL the link goes to, and the text used to make the link. Your URL should always be keyword rich, read more about choosing keywords, so that takes care of the first part, but what about making sure other people link to you using phrases you want to remembered for?

Let's give a simple example, this blog uses my name in the URL, so I have to be really careful to make sure every article or post has a keyword rich title so that the keywords appear in my URL - OK, not too difficult to that, but the dang truth is that most people who link to me use my name, which is flattering, but it doesn't help me in the SERPs, unless I really want to rank for Carl, and honestly I don't, I'd rather rank for make money online, or search engine optimization tips, or finding keywords.

Right there, those phrases are what I want in anchor text for links that point to me. Now I could create a hundred websites and link each of them to me using my preferred anchor text, but that's hard work, far too much work for the amount of time I have available. The better approach is to simply make comments on other people's blogs, or submit articles to article submission sites and use the anchor text instead of my name.

So, let's say I visit your blog, I'd want you to approve my comment, so I'd probably want to be careful about using only keyword rich text for my name, but I might type "Carl (Make Money Online)" into the text box, which gives you my name, and also some context about my blog, and probably doesn't annoy you, but in my anchor text I still get my main keyword. This helps.

However when I write articles and then complete the author resource box I'd be more likely to leave out my name altogether because the author's name usually points to their profile page, so the links in my resource box only link to my blog, and in that case I can easily create a relevant sentence using my keywords.

The same thing goes for signature links in forums. Look, anchor text isn't rocket science, you can find an almost unlimited number of sites where your anchor text will be accepted, so why not try it out? You'll enjoy the the extra boost in the SERPs it will give you.
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in SEO, Traffic   Comments (24)

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  1. Andrew@BloggingGuide said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 06:07 (Reply)

    Nice article about anchor text. This is one factor that’s often passed over which is an absolutely essential part of search engine optimization.

  2. Carl said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 09:27 (Reply)

    Totally agree, and almost all the gurus claim that backlinking is about 90-95% of their workload, which if you think about it means people who spend too much time on content are not doing themselves any favors.

    When I first discovered that no matter how hard I worked on building my site I could never compete with guys who were in more forums, or had a bigger ciricle of friends, I almost cried - it was heart wrenching to learn that SEO has nothing to do with content, and everything to do with getting more backlinks.

    Now I've developed strategies for getting backlinks that are more powerful than anything those guys can do with all their friends, and I pretty much beat them every time. Except for this blog because I've lost interest in being the biggest SEO guru.

  3. Affordable HP Toners said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 06:51 (Reply)

    I do vary the anchor text that I use in my link building. Specifically, when leaving comments in different blogs.

    However, there are times that it's hard to vary phrase without sounding SEOish.

  4. Carl said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 09:21 (Reply)

    My best advice on varying your anchor text on blogs is not to bother too much, the reality is that blog comments don't get as much juice, and the effort of creating your anchor text isn't worth it.

    On the other hand if you're churning out articles for ezine or goarticles, then each article can have a different anchor no problem.

    Maybe your problem is that you're overthinking your backlinks strategy. I tend to be of the opinion that search engines raise a flag if too many of your backlinks are keyword rich, so use your name occasionally, use crap keywords at times, the important part of the strategy is to get more backlinks than your competition, and in almost every niche that means a lot of work so the longer you agonize over your anchor the less you'll actually do. Thanks for joining the discussion.

  5. PAW1300T 7V said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 16:27 (Reply)

    I agree. That's why varying your backlinks are important. Some can be your keywords, which should be more than one, some urls etc

  6. Kim - self improvement and motivation said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 23:39 (Reply)

    While I agree its important to get backlinks with anchor text, I think the type of backlinks you get are important as well.

    One thing that I really appreciate about this article is the 'common sense' part. You are right - it common sense, but sometimes it's darn hard to make those keywords or keyword phrases blend well in a post or article.

  7. Carl said,

    Wednesday, March 3. 2010 at 23:50 (Reply)

    I suspect you might be over thinking your backlink strategy if it's difficult for you.

    Remember you should be getting a broad selection of relevant, non-relevant, anchor text so that your links look natural. Too many webmasters rush off to only get high PR relevant links, and it obviously looks like a link building exercise to anyone who analyzes their backlinks.

    If you're commenting on blogs use your name and your website name or main keywords, and if you're using a forum or article submission then use relevant keywords, but at all times vary your keywords. If you find this too difficult, go back to Google's Keyword Tool and find a bunch of short and longer tail keywords that could apply to your website and use them.

    If your site is a niche website then don't worry about varying things too much, I mean if you only have five highly focused pages then I don't think too many people would be worried about you using keyword rich anchor over and over again.

  8. What is the Bible said,

    Thursday, March 4. 2010 at 08:07 (Reply)

    For awhile when I would comment on blogs that I liked, I would use my name (Andrew), and then post my link. Do you think that it makes comment pages to spammy looking, if that is even a phrase. I think that when everybody uses SEO friendly anchor text it looks a little off, but everybody else is doing it so I changed over as well!

  9. Carl said,

    Thursday, March 4. 2010 at 08:39 (Reply)

    Hey Andrew, the issue of looking spammy is one only you and the site owner can judge. On a personal level I hate when I see keywords instead of a person's name, I do prefer name(@keyword) as a format for comments, but that is only one way of doing it and we're each different.

    On this blog I moderate all comments and the spammy ones get chucked out. For example this post has had over 50 comments, but the majority have been people or bots who are just abusing the commenting idea. Unfortunately some people just don't get that building links from commenting isn't a right, it's a privilege.

  10. jitendra gaur said,

    Thursday, March 4. 2010 at 12:04 (Reply)

    In SEO link anchor text plays an important role but most of people tend to misuse it. Like if I want to put hyperlink for bookmybootcamp I would put a anchor text of microsoft boot camp, cisco boot camp

  11. Carl said,

    Thursday, March 4. 2010 at 12:51 (Reply)

    You've got it, that is pretty much what you'd do, although I wouldn't use two anchor text in the same link, otherwise you could rank for neither.

  12. Arron said,

    Thursday, March 4. 2010 at 22:35 (Reply)

    I have a question Carl, when I realize someone links to my site and say they use a URL or or maybe just the name of the company or maybe even my name or something for anchor text. But really I want it to look something like this: Window Contractors. Can I go to that person that linked to me and really ask him to change it to my desired link text? Like if it's in a blog article or some piece of content?

  13. Carl said,

    Thursday, March 4. 2010 at 22:41 (Reply)

    Absolutely Arron, you shouldn't feel reticent about asking another site to change their anchor text when they link to you. Some will refuse, and might even remove the links altogether, most will ignore you, but a few will actually change the link and I'm of the opinion even one webmaster changing their link is better than none.

    You really have nothing to lose so give it a go.

  14. Michael at Promotional Products said,

    Friday, March 5. 2010 at 18:09 (Reply)

    Carl,

    Why do some sites rank high for a keyword, or have high page rank with only a handful of links. My former employer has only links between their various sites, yet they have PR5 or higher page ranks and high serps.

  15. Carl said,

    Friday, March 5. 2010 at 18:24 (Reply)

    Michael, thanks for commenting.

    SEO is not an exact science, it is more like a cat and mouse game between the major search engines, in particular Google, and us. We want the best for our websites, but Google prefers to march to their own tune.

    That said, some things remain constant. The age of the domain, how large the site is, what type of sites links to it, and how the other sites are seen by Google as well.

    Quite simply, high page rank depends on getting a lot of relevant backlinks and preferably high PR backlinks to your website, high serps also require a lot of backlinks, but high serps don't necessarily require high PR.

    I have several sites that earn really good money simply by ranking well for long tail keywords, and they are all low PR sites, conversely I have sites with good PR that struggle to rank.

    This is why good anchor text from relevant sites are so important. With low competition in the serps almost any website with a few keyword rich backlinks can rank, but to rank for high competition keywords you need both high PR, and lots of relevant backlinks.

  16. Lincoln - Toner Cartridge Blogger said,

    Saturday, March 6. 2010 at 11:22 (Reply)

    "You've got it, that is pretty much what you'd do, although I wouldn't use two anchor text in the same link, otherwise you could rank for neither. "

    Carl, with regards to that comment. Isn't advantageous to use a long phrase?

    For example, laser toner printer cartridge.

    It covers the keyphrase
    -laser toner
    and
    - printer cartridges.

    More like shooting two birds in one stone.

  17. Carl said,

    Saturday, March 6. 2010 at 11:51 (Reply)

    No, because Google groups both phrases into a single long tail keyword, so you'll rank for the term laser toner printer cartridge, but not necesarily for the terms laser toner or printer cartridges.

    You need to work out which is more important to you, the double long tail, or the two shorter keywords. Remember, your goal should be to get thousands of backlinks so merging your anchor text like this is just silly. If you comment on blogs or write articles for ezine every day, then vary your anchor text, soon you'll have enough relevant backlinks and rank for the keywords if the serp competition isn't too strong.

  18. Shawn - Ford Mustang said,

    Friday, March 12. 2010 at 04:24 (Reply)

    Do you recommend any deeper level page linking.? Or does it make more sense to back link strictly to your home page?

  19. Carl said,

    Friday, March 12. 2010 at 09:14 (Reply)

    I always deep link into pages that have the main keyword in the page url, titles etc. These days I only ever link to my homepage for my main keyword, all of the other keywords Iwant to rank for get a dedicated page on my sites, then I link into them.

  20. Scaune birou said,

    Sunday, April 25. 2010 at 09:35 (Reply)

    I tried to optimize my website contents till i get over 90% with Web CEO or IBP software, but i get no result.
    When i start making back-links, everything changed,

  21. Adam (Child Abuse Recovery) said,

    Thursday, August 5. 2010 at 12:43 (Reply)

    Thanks for this article. Based on my experience, back links make all the difference in the world when you're trying to make your website more visible to the search engines.

  22. Carl said,

    Thursday, August 5. 2010 at 13:26 (Reply)

    Thanks Adam, but don't forget internal linking, they can be dynamite if used correctly.

  23. Earn Cash Online said,

    Sunday, October 31. 2010 at 18:05 (Reply)

    Carl,

    Internal linking is great. I have always tried to link to at least 2 of my other pages and since starting that I have really jumped in the search engine rankings. The nice part about internal links is that when others use my articles I get links on their sites as well.

  24. Boise Idaho Real Estate said,

    Saturday, October 22. 2011 at 16:29 (Reply)

    I appreciate your article on anchor texts. It's nice to refresh on the basics. - Steven C.

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