Unique Original Articles » SEO Factors Series Keyword Focused Anchor Text From External Sites

In this series we will focus on specific Search Engine Optimization Ranking Factors. Today we will focus on keyword anchoring text from external sites. SEO professionals rank anchor text as being the most important ranking factor at 73% in a survey conducted by SEOmoz.



Links from external sites help your site to gain relevance for keywords mentioned in the anchor text which boosts your site’s ranking. As the number of such inbound links increase, so will your site’s ranking in SERPs. Therefore, anchor text should be the first item at the top of your SEO initiatives checklist.



So, what is Anchor text from external sites? Anchor text is the visible hyperlinked text on a page. Look at the following example:



Please examine our SEO case studies (http://www.SEOrank.com/seo-case-studies.php) for validation to evaluate our search engine optimization capabilities."



Here the words "SEO case studies" and "search engine optimization" are hyper linked to the hidden URLs http://www.seorank.com/seo-case-studies.php and www.seorank.com respectively. The words within the hyperlink, "SEO case studies" and "search engine optimization", are called the anchor text. 1



In most sites anchor text is used to identify the subject of the page that it links to. If your anchor text says “Hawaii Vacation Properties” visitors will expect to see information about vacation properties in Hawaii when they click on your link.



Search engine algorithms look for this type of pattern in links because the underlying assumption is that there will be a high degree of relevance to the anchor keyword(s) for the “target” or “landing page” when that URL is clicked.



Keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page that pertains to the keywords used. The relevance of the page containing the anchor text will be somewhat enhanced because of relevant keywords appearing on that page but the real winner is the target page URL. You can use this knowledge to build up the relevance of each page in your site by optimizing anchor text that contains important keywords that are relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages in your site.



Including important keywords in the anchor text can make a huge difference in the final ranking of your site pages. For the three big search engines, they all give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages. Google even has a special operator: ‘allinanchor:keyword’, which picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages.



It would appear that Google’s algorithm is configured to index anchor text as a separate queryable database. This fact means that Google considers it an important pointer to page relevance.



Recent research indicates that the weight given to anchor text has been recently increased in the Google algorithm. It is likely other search engines will do the same. That means it is possible to enhance your website’s ranking by using the right keywords in your anchor text.



It is also true from prior research, that anchor text, whether from externalor internal pages, is important. This makes it even more critical to pay close attention to the inclusion of important keywords in your anchor text.



Anchor text optimization can be used throughout your site to enhance the relevance of most of your web pages based on individual page content. It really is quite easy to do. There are simple ways to create suitable hyperlinking structures to make use of optimized anchor text.



When using hyperlinks that link to internal pages of your own website consider using a format format like:



“Read all about”….”Your keyword anchor text here” or



“Read all about Anchor Text Optimization here: http://www.mywebsite.com.”



The above examples show us that you can leverage the hyperlinking of important keyword phrases instead of hyperlinking unrelated text. It is always a great idea to restructure sentences if keywords don’t fit in anchor text.



You can also insert important keyword phrases in your page’s natural text and link it to relevant target pages of your site by carefully rewording the text of your web pages. If you feel that the standard underlined hyperlinks appear ugly on your website, then you can re-format its HTML markup code to change color of the text and get rid of the underline without losing the power of the anchor text.



Keywords within the anchor text are equally useful for links from other sites that point to your website. If you thinking about doing a link building campaign, think seriously about providing multiple variations of the title and description of the link pointing to your website that all have your keywords within an anchor text.



The "title" which is used most often as the hyper-linked text, should contain your important keywords. It is good to work with ten different options of the title and description because it gives you more room to play around with several keywords and it also helps search engines give you a wider keyword coverage.



When trying to establish external links it is better to provide your own "cut and paste" HTML code. Webmasters like it when a ready to paste HTML code is available for them to use, to provide a link to your website.



Just remember that Keyword anchor text from external sites needs to remain at the top of your SEO priority task list. Even though the rules of SEO are changing somewhat keywords, anchor text and linkbuilding will continue to be prime components of a successful SEO marketing strategy.





1- Example taken from an article from SEOrank.com February 2004
Mr Marketology provides http://www.mrmarketology.com">http://www.mrmarketology.com (this link goes outside odesk.com)">search enginemarketingservices for the business owners and marketing executives.
Article Source: JS2 Article Spinner