Anchors Away

It may be a surprise to some SEO professionals but according to a study by SEOmoz, the single most important factor to page-specific search engine rankings, is optimized anchor text from external links. The search engine spiders are not only looking for text, but also are interested in the keywords you utilize in your anchor text for links.

Unfortunately, while creating the anchor text can be quite simple, the process of creating external content is time consuming. One of the best ways to optimize is to create and publish articles, press releases, and blogs. This gives you the ability to control the content and the actual links that link back to your site. Basically, you are calling attention to a link and set of words that you want the engines to consider when ranking.

Imagine that the search spiders are swimming in a sea of text with nothing on the horizon. Now imagine that the sea was suddenly filled with boatloads of keywords. Clearly it would be a lot easier to find the keywords if they were in standing out in their anchored boats.

Many SEO professionals have noted countless positive results from the fruits of their anchor-optimized labor. Some interesting results have been ranking well for a page without even mentioning the keyword in the body of the page, and some have mentioned that pages even get good rank for keywords on sites that even have yet to launch.

There are some important things to remember before your embark on an anchor text optimization campaign:

1. Make sure you are linking to relevant content
2. Make sure you are linking from a diverse set of sites
3. Perform an extensive keyword research…you might find easy ways to win under utilized keywords
4. Utilize Page Rank when determining where you want to link to…this is usually a good start when considering anchor text
5. It does not hurt to brand your anchor text…research has shown that anchors with the brand within them, tend to rank better and make the content more accessible when hovering over the link.
6. Don’t forget to use the title attribute when entering anchor text
7. If you post an article, try to “spin” the article with new anchor text

As with any search engine optimization, balance is key. A good start would be to focus on 2-3 links per page that link back to your site. We are confident that if you add proper anchor text optimization into the SEO mix, you can expect great results. Anchors Away!

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