Anchor text internal links

[dpaq2011]

Hello,

I read about a practice (also suggested by EasyWP SEO plugin) whereby I should place on my current page (call it page A) an internal link to another page (call it page B) using as anchor text the keywords I want page A to rank for.

I dont really understand this and it is a cause of great confusion in my head...

Can someone explain this to me and why this would be good practice? I would have thought that having as anchor text to page B a keyword I want page A to rank well for would steal juice from page A and give it to page B?

Or am I missing something else?

Thanks !

[coremediadesign]

You should always (by always I mean whenever possible) use the keywords in the link to your site, regardless of whether they are coming from the external or internal source.

There is a very good example of how much it might help with your SEO campaign.
If you type in Google 'click here' you will find that top of the list is Adobe Reader download page.

The reason why it ranks so well for this, rather unusual keyword is because many websites, which offer PDF download also put the sentence saying something along these lines:

"...click here if you haven't got it already installed on your computer...'

where 'click here' is the text of the link to the Adobe's page with the Reader download.

Now - when you put a link on page A to page B - you give the keyword credit to page B, but also page A, because the keywords actually appears within the content of page A as well as points to the other one. I might be a bit confusing, but at the end of the day you are building a keyword rich website.

[MikeGracia]

Personally I would prefer to link TO a page with the keyphrase I wish that page to rank for, ideally from in-content of a relevant page/paragraph (whilst trying to avoid 'keyword cannibalism'! (unless it is intentional, as can sometimes be done to gain multiple page 1 positions!).

There are other things that you can do similar to what you describe above, but in general, I feel it is more useful and effective to link with the phrase/anchor that you wish a page to rank for, pointing TO that page, not FROm that page.

It is sometimes a good idea to cross link with related anchors (to other pages) - have a google search for seo silo also, as that can shed some light on internal linking stratergies (not everyone agrees, or uses SEO silo's, but there is good info to gain from researching the topic, whether you use it, or not!).

Cheers!

Mike.

Ps. Although those are my opinions, I am looking forward to reading what other folks think too!

[AlanMosley]

no you are correct, the link text of in-comming links helps with ranking fopr the linked page, not the linking page