Correct use of Anchor Text
-
When is the right time to vary your anchor text?
My companies most competitive keyword is "Chicago Movers" and I am just wondering when I should start varying my link building around say for instance
Professional Chicago Movers
Cheap Chicago Movers
Best Chicago Movers
When is it alright or not alright to just keep building keywords around just "Chicago Movers"
-
Gah! Such easy linking! You can go move a piano for a blogger, and get a link...
Anyway, I would start varying it immediately. Not only will you always be safe from getting your link building dampened, but partial match anchor text has been shown to be about equal, or, in some cases, better.
You should totally follow social media to find people that are moving on slow days, and just offer to help. It would help with word of mouth marketing, as well as an ability to gather links/social signals.
-
There is really no one size fits all method to this. It varies from site to site. If you are working with an exact match domain (EMD), which I'm assuming you're not, you would be able to do it more often. But, with a case like this I would suggest doing a backlink analysis to see what percentage of your links are using the "Chicago Movers" anchor text. If it's the majority, then I would try and balance it out with other keywords. If it's only a small portion then you can go ahead and start building more of them. The key is to make it look natural and not over optimize for one keyword. Also, links with partial keywords and long anchor links like "...find yourself a cheap chicago mover" are a great way to vary your links and make them look natural.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Competitor using our product descriptions
Hi, We have a competitor (with a higher DA) using some content from our product pages word for word on a few of their product pages. It's only a couple paragraphs per product page (including the main product description), not the entirety of the content on the page. It also appears they have scraped some content from another authoritative competitor (and even left their brand name mentioned on it!) I've read mixed thoughts on whether plagiarized content will harm the original site, but am concerned since it is an authoritative site. Should I be concerned since it's only parts of our product page? Thank you all!
Competitive Research | | ATShock0 -
What do you think of this Anchor text?
What do you think of the anchor text for this big site? www.guitarworld.com/ It is mostly "Guitar World" which I think could be a natural link profile, as I think that's the anchor text a lot of unbiased people would use, and probably only a typical search term based on the companies popularity in the first place.
Competitive Research | | Zoolander0 -
What is a recommended sitemap generator to use for both us and our clients?
Right now we are using xml-sitemaps.com however it looks like it isn't generating an accurate or lengthy sitemap. Do you have any recommendations?
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Can you track multiple domains with the same key words and not use up your keyword limit?
I have roughly 7 domains that I am trying to monitor with the same set of keywords. Is there a way to do this without using up your keyword limit. They are the same words just different sites.
Competitive Research | | sixthcents0 -
Is using photos of people to market your ecommce a good idea? Do you think people relate more?
So I noticed all the leading competitors in our market are using photos of people on their home pages to market products.. While we are using a simple but eye catching design with no photos of people but only produts.
Competitive Research | | JHSpecialty0 -
My competition is using 1px images and links without anchor text. Good or bad idea?
I've been scoping out some of my competition and I noticed the number 1 ranking site is doing a lot of "interesting" stuff. I saw a bunch of 1px blank images that they must be using for the alt tag keywords. I also noticed several links to internal pages with different keywords without anchor text so they don't actually appear on the page. Is this considered black hat? Should I be doing something similar? It feels like the work I'm doing to try to rank #1 with a clean/professional looking site are wasted when the #1 sites are doing things like this.
Competitive Research | | technota0 -
Is There Video Instruction on How To Use SEOMoz and Open Site Explorer?
Hi I have just signed up to use this software and would like to know how to use it properly. Is there a video tutorial on how to get the most out of the tools? I want to get the competition's backlinks but for some reason it's not openiing the page. I also want to know how the backlinks are assessed to find the real quality ones that I can link to. How are the backlinks assesed and what standards are used to asses backlink quality? Thank you Sunil.
Competitive Research | | sunilmuse0
