Anchor Text Usage
-
Hi,
What is the best way to use anchor text during link building after recent updates from Google.
I thinking of doing the following:
60% Brand Keyword (my site name)
20% Click here, visit this site etc
20% myurl.com
10% a Mix of both broad & phrase match of my targetted keyword.What do you suggest
Does anyone have a working strategy?
Will be waiting for your replies...
-
Hi Vegitss,
Great topic as I'm actually working on a blog post about this as we speak.
Since Penguin and the over-optimization updates, we've seen an explosion of "click here" and "example.com" links in an effort to "normalize" folks' backlink profiles. The article that David mentioned on Microsite Masters did a lot to propel this myth.
But there's a downside too. Links like "click here" don't communicate much information to Google about context. In fact, the last time Google updated it's SEO Starter Guide, it officially discouraged these types of links:
Avoid:
- writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here"
- using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to
- using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases
- although there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new website's address
Bill Slawski has written extensively about anchor text and their use in Phrase Based Indexing through Google patent filings. If I may quote one of his summaries:
"Anchor text in links pointing to a page that include the phrase or a related phrase (one that tends to co-occur on pages that rank for that phrase) should be given more weight than anchor text that doesn’t."
Of course, a lot has changed in the past couple of years. Google is undoubtedly much better at using contextual analysis and techniques like co-citation at inferring link context.
So I do my best to avoid generic anchors whenever possible. 4 alternatives to generic anchors that I like to use include:
- Brand/Business Name - I see it's on your list - There is potential for problems if your brand name is also keyword rich, like "Best Blue Widgets Inc" - This is almost the same as exact match keywords, so it's best to proceed cautiously.
- People's Names - Such as folks who work in your organization. Got this tip from Dan Shure - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dt_0u98gVE
- Partial Match - The problem with partial match is that folks over-do it.
- Loan
- Payday Loan
- Fast Cash Loan... These are obviously intended for search engines and not for users. A true partial match anchor text puts the user first, like "find consumer friendly loan options here" or "a great borrowing program" are more indicative of what I would prefer.
- Related Text - Again, from Bill Slawski - "(as defined by the phrase-based indexing patents) than generic text, especially if the anchor text gives potential visitors a good idea of what they might find on the other side of a link."
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. But I think if we look at Google's intent - create content for users and not search engines - adopting this strategy will go much further long term than any short term gains had by trying to "trick" search engines by using "click" here type anchor text.
Just my 2 cents
-
Check out this case study:
It will answer your question and will be better than any opinion you read here.
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
-
Text over image
Hello, I am creating an overlay on a image. Is it ok to write on this overlay in html or it is better to have the text not on a image for google and other search engines ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Does changing Anchor text of old built links raise a red flag in Google?
I have lot of links (10000+) built against Exact match anchor text so what is solution to that now? Other than disavowing them all, May I change the anchor text of those links (From Exact Match To Brand Name or naked URL)? Does Google have algorithms to detect anchor text changes and if so, do those algorithms detect these sorts of changes and raise a red flag on sites doing it. I respect your opinions but please only comment if you are sure about it because I am already facing a penalty so can't afford to get another.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan1 -
Is my text readable? I don't see it in the page source
Text on my site seems to be readable in a text only version (the page is not cached so I viewed it by disabling JAVA and then copy and pasted the page into Word) However, when I look in the page source I don't see the text there. The text was created using Open X html boxes to help us with formatting, but is this causing an SEO problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Links in body text
From a purely SEO /link juice perspective, is there any benefit to linking from body text to a page that is in a pervasive primary navigation? The primary nav puts a link at the top of the HTML. With the tests done by members of this site, the "first link counts" rule negates the link juice value of a link in the body text if there is already a link in the nav. Now I've also seen the data on using hash tags to get a second or third link, but ignoring that, it would seem that links in the body text to pages in the nav have zero effect. This brings me to another question - block level navigation. If anchor text links pass more juice than links in the top navigation, why would you put your most coveted target pages in the top nav? You would be better off building links in the content, which would create a poor user experience. To me, the theory that anchor text links in the body pass more juice than links in the primary nav doesn't make any sense. Can someone please explain this to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Two Pics, one bit of Text single anchor link?
Hi thereGurus, sorry Aspirants ;-), I have a really nice looking menu used in my standard page template that has some SEO issues now due to possibly causing 'too many onsite links' penalty/downgrade on some of my bigger pages going >120 links. Wanting to keep the nice menu, I want to work around the issues if possible. The menu is comprised of 7 buttons with various keywords pertinent to the site. On the menu, hovering over the keyword in a button eg 'Technology' causes this button with word inside to do an animated slide down and a picture representative of 'Technology' to appear where the button was with the original button directly below it, which then a side menu slides out of to the right to reveal 5 anchor links that represent the 'Technology' menu category. The first option in this sub-menu is supposed to have the same anchor link as the description image and the button/button text that being it is like a category description. Trouble I am having is that the slide out menu requires a separate div for javascript reasons. I have one anchor covering the button and the pop-up image, but then I need a second anchor for the first line of the slide out menu (otherwise fails W3C). This is adding 7 duplicate anchors to the page on a e-Commerce page that already has too many anchors IMHO. I read in HTML5 you can have an anchor holding a div inside, but how about an un'd div? The next four items on the slide out menu go to other anchor links so it first anchor needs to end prior to these, hence halfway through a div. Is there another way of making multiple items (across div boundaries etc) only go to/count as one single anchor link? Thanks for your help, Brad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
What should my optimal anchor text look like, given cannibalization risk?
We have a content page with the explicit goal of ranking highly for "raised garden beds". We drive traffic from this page to our various types of raised garden beds in our store. The "FarmsteadRaised Garden Bed" is one such product. http://eartheasy.com/grow_raised_beds.htm Should we avoid using "raised garden beds" in the anchor text of the internal links pointing to the products in our store because of cannibalization? We recently changed the anchor text of the internal links to have keywords instead of just "click here" or "more info" - was this a good idea? What should our optimal anchor text look like?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aran0880 -
Would using display:none; to hide a section of text effect SEO negatively?
I have seen several sites that put a div feature at the bottom of a page to hide content. If you click on the button, it will extend the page down and be loaded with paragraphs of text rich with keywords. Does anyone know is this is viewed as a negative with Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netmkting0