How Important is Placement of Anchor Text
-
I'm working on a series of guest posts to help promote a site. These are competitive, high quality posts from a well-respected resource in the industry. I placed the author introduction at the front of the posts, with anchor text for the keywords we are targetting (e.g., "This is a guest post by John Doe, a [keyword] who ... and writes about [keyword].").
I understand that having the anchor text in a prominent location - such as near the front of the post - will probably be more authoritative than a sentence at the very end. My question: how significant is this difference?
The blog that I am posting on wants to include author information at the end only and only have one link using the site name (which doesn't contain keywords). The post I sent had two deep links using keyword-rich anchor text, placed at the beginning. I am trying to decide whether to walk away and keep shopping the material around.
-
I'll also add this - if the link and it's surrounding text are NOT directly related in a laser-focus manner to the content topical focus of the article itself, it's not even an ideal link from a "pure" SEO perspective, even if it's high up in the content area.
Which just reinforces the whole "don't get lost on this being such a big deal" concept.
-
From a pure SEO perspective, the higher up in the page's main content area the better. However once you introduce overall inbound link profile factors, if all you have are top of content area links, it looks unnatural. So eventually it becomes a negative. That's why it's vital to not get hung up on any single particular SEO tactic. Aiming for "perfect" SEO ultimately causes you to end up with "flawed" SEO.
-
Thanks to all who have responded. Let me bring it back to my original question, though, which I may have obscured with all of the related information. All else being equal: on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it that the link and anchor text appear in the first paragraph in the post instead of 500+ words later in the author attribution box? I know that there's some benefit (in terms of more authority), but how much?
Of course, I know this is somewhat speculative. Just wanting to get your views.
-
Link placement is pretty much the whole point in block level analysis so it's definitely important. But all I know is that links from within the body content surrounded by relevant text wins against footer, side bar, and links page links. I "think" but could be wrong, the only link worth more is a link from the main nav... but I assume that would only be for internal links anyway?
-
" It's a so-so site."
Then maybe you can get a better deal elsewhere.
I publish some "contributed content" but as soon as the person starts talking about links and anchor text my interest in the content falls through the floor. I immediately worry about linking to a site where manipulation is happening..... the content usually isn't worth it after that.
Just sayin' how some people view articles and links.
-
Thanks for the response. It's a so-so site. The site has a DmR of 4.2, but doesn't seem to pass much authority to the blog portion of the site (the blog is integrated into a larger website). The article will be relevant to the site visitors, but we are unlikely to see any conversions from visitors of this site (it's a legal article and the attorney who authored it can only practice in her jurisdiction). Other blog posts by guest authors don't seem to rank particularly well, but there are some exceptions.
-
Every site needs a variety of inbound links from a variety of sources, with a variety of "footprints". So don't turn down a high value site opportunity just because you don't get the kind of link profile you think you need from it.
Not only is it good for SEO to have such a variety, it's good for visitor click-through traffic, which in turn can lead to more interaction, more engagement, and more buzz. Those then in turn bring back even more value from an SEO perspective in full circle.
-
Without further information about the website... the one that you consider walking away from might have the best links - even if you only get one of them.
The guy obviously has his standards and isn't going to prostitute his site to linkbuilders.
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
-
Tools which automatically check anchor text
Tools which alert of low anchor text diversity Hey guys does anyone know of any tools which can alert you of low anchor text diversity across sites? Any backlink tools/data sources have alerts like this? Cheers.
Link Building | | jayoliverwright0 -
A website with a spam score of 5 is back linking to me. How important is to get that link removed?
There is a website that OSE has identified with a spam score of 5, it back links to me with a very specific key word. How important is it to have them remove those links?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
How important is the originating country of backlinks?
How important is it that you gain backlinks from websites in the same country you're targeting? Scenario: You have a website targeting users in Japan. How important is it that backlinks to your website are from Japanese websites? Do you need a majority of links from Japanese websites to rank well, or will you do OK with 25% Japanese links and 75% links from other countries? According to Majestic, sites for popular Japanese brands like tsutaya.co.jp and seiyu.co.jp get more links from US sites than from Japanese sites.
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
Disavow Anchor and EMD
Lets say you have an legitimate EMD for a domain that is a ecommerce site with reasonable content. The site traffic was cut in half by Penguin. You think one of the main reasons that you were hit is old SEO black hat link building with Anchor that is exact match.....The catch 22 an exact match achor is the EMD. I want to disavow some of these old black hat backlinks and obviously I will nuke the ones from the spammy sites first and see what happens. What about the backlinks that have achor of emd.com (the company name and as it so happens a valid EMD) or just EMD. If the hit is coming from every single link becuase they are all exact match becuase that is the proper legit match and not some attempt to game the system......What the heck do you do? I get the War on spammy EMDs but I hope the legit ones are not hit even more. For one thing google should just have this ironic creteria for excluding EMDs....if they are running AdWords....they are 95% spam sites.....I love the irony of that one. I am betting lots of these mange to still get listed.
Link Building | | freestone0 -
Should we Have Our Anchor Text Changed?
Unfortunately, we used a SEO company to do some link building for us and they used a lot of marketed keywords as anchor text instead of branded. About a month into the project, we saw a drop in ranking for those keywords. From what I've read, Google is cracking down on marketed keywords in anchor text (when it is done in a spammy looking way). I have contacted the company that did the work and they said they could update the anchor text. So my questions are: Should we asked them to change the anchor text to branded keywords or should we just leave them? 2) If we do have them changed, do you think Google will look at that as another spammy move? Any input would be great. Lesson learned not to used a reputable SEO company and for us not to monitor how they were submitting links. Ron
Link Building | | dustyabe0 -
Deciding on anchor text for content-based backlinks
So you have a decent blog on the other side of the world ready and willing to work with you. Their content relates to your industry, and you're going to be allocated a lovely page of content, once a week, with a link or two back to your site. Do you think anchor text is still as important in May 2012 as everyone said it was three years ago? How do you determine what anchor text to have based on your answer to the question above?
Link Building | | Martin_S0 -
I have been under the understanding that it is best to vary your anchor text.
I have been working on a keyword term "boat covers" - however a link from the manufacturer site with the anchor text something like "Company Name Boat Covers" would be just a good or better. Is this correct? Thanks, Brook
Link Building | | tdawson090 -
What is the general consensus on using Text Broker for content?
I have seen generally good reviews for http://www.textbroker.com. Does anyone here have personal experience with it? We are considering using it for content creation for guest blogging for clients. As far as we have found, this is all within Google's acceptable webmaster guidelines. In general, how much editing is required from an article provided by Text Broker? Thanks!
Link Building | | outofboundsdigital0