How important are exact keywords in your anchor text?
-
Hi Guys,
I’m relatively new to SEO. I’ve recently started working for a website design company and am in the process of changing the anchor text in the footer of all of our clients sites.
At the moment most of them read “graphic design & web development by dara creative” with anchor text being dara creative taking you to our home page. As you can see we are not fully taking advantage of the keywords that could have a higher impact. So I’ve done some keyword research and I hope to concentrate my efforts on the following keywords as the anchor text leading to the home page; website design Dublin, website design Ireland, web developemt Dublin and web design Ireland so it may read something like
“web design Dublin by dara creative”
However this doesn’t read so well as people may think that the company might be called “web design Dublin”. So the alternative might be “web design in Dublin by dara creative”.
So my question is which would rank better? Does google rank the exact searched keywords higher than broader searched words?
Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
rob
-
I would agree with Ryan, just use the company name, looks better and works better.
-
In a natural situation brands typically get exact anchor text only if it's their brand "acme plastering" and not for what they want to rank for "plastering london". If Google starts seeing 100% exact match on all your anchor text you're going to raise a few flags with them. Including what you do is a good idea next to the brand like it was suggested above.
-
Hi Rob, I know an agency that got a penalty for doing exactly what you are doing. It's not worth going back and changing old links - maybe if you significantly change the copy in a blog post but not footer links. Leave them as they are and for new footer links go branded as Ryan suggests - you need to build a brand.
In Ireland it is useful to get a load of .ie links - don't worry too much about the anchor text - just get the local domains.
With this kind of foundation, you will only need a handful of keyword rich links. try to get as natural looking a profile as possible.
-
Anchor text is important but you don't need that many exact matches. If you concentrate on getting brand links (from strong domains), then you only need a few keyword matching anchor text links. You should also vary the anchor text bu using plurals, stop words and modifiers.
-
Rob, anchor text is important but footer links are low value. I wouldn't focus the links with that level of detail. For your company, I would simply recommend using your company's name. If your company name is Acme Web Design then the footer look would be something like "Developed by Acme Web Design". The text "Acme Web Design" would form the anchor text and link to your home page.
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
-
Naked link anchors or long tail anchors ?
Hi, Do naked link anchors such as "www.mysite.com/my-category" have the same SEO power as long tails anchors? What about the UX which such anchors? Lately a site published our back-to-school article with this horrible naked link anchor, it does not look friendly to me as a reader, but I am wondering whether I should bother, how important it is for google and for readers? Thank you in advance. Isabelle
Link Building | | isabelledylag0 -
Is having multiple links with the same anchor text on a webpage beneficial?
We heard at a recent SEO conference that having multiple links with the exact same anchor text on a page is not beneficial in any way. Is this true? For example, if the link is in the navigation and it is in the footer does it only get counted once by Google for SEO purposes? Is there no SEO benefit to it?
Link Building | | donationtown0 -
Quick Question About Exact Matched Keyword Domain
if you have lets say tools.examplexxxx.com in which "tools" + "example" makes a good keyword together i.e [example tools] (a good key word). Is it wise to put 300 quality backlinks with exact matched anchor text containing keyword**[example tools]** from niche related domains and not worrying getting hit by penguin.
Link Building | | ksbnok0 -
Anchor text
Hi there, I am looking at creating some back links into my website using guest blogging, be it product reviews, competitions or writing the post myself. I had a look at my competitors back link profile, all I can say is that they all look artificial (paid for) the article itself reads well, however when I see something like this: 'If you house got burgled and you never had home insurance in place, you could lose thousands of pounds of household goods' It just looks paid for, the question is if I am placing a guest post on a blog, what is best practice in making the link look more natural? Thank you
Link Building | | Paul780 -
How do I best leverage second EMD domain with same keyword as an important page on my other site?
(Fictional domain names and keywords follow) Let's say I have an Adense site called Diets.com And on that site I've got 10 pages for the ten most popular diets, and each of those pages is optimized for the diet name. Let's imagine one of these pages is called, "The low-carb diet." Then I went out and purchased the domain name LowCarbDiet.com. How do I best use this new domain name? My options seem to be: 1. Build an adsense site on LowCarbDiet.com. But isn't it a problem when the the same owner of LowCardDiet.com and Diets.com are trying to rank for the same keyword? The new site would be trying to rank for "low carb diet" and so would the appropriate page on Diets.com. I think Google doesn't like this. True? 2. Make a one-page introductory informational site with no ads on the new LowCarbDiet.com. Have a prominent link from that site to the appropriate page on Diets.com for the reader to get "further information." This link with the proper anchor text should help boost the page in Diets.com in the SERPs. IF Google doesn't dislike that. SO...is one idea better than the other? Are neither a good idea? Is there a better way to utilize this new domain? It's important because this second domain name's keyword is about to get a huge amount of search traffic. The new, parked domain name is currently registered in the same name as the existing site's name. I could change the registration or privacy it, but I assume Google maintains records of all past registered owners, and if so, I can't really hide ownership.
Link Building | | bizzer0 -
Retain keywords with redirect
I manage a site the sells product A and product B (both major keywords for us). If I buy the url www.productB.com and redirect it to the original website, would the original website gain any benefits in search engines? Would the benefits of having a url with the keyword be lessened because there isn't content hosted there, only a redirect to the original site?
Link Building | | livethesource0 -
Is there any tool in/or out of SEOMOZ where we can check anchor texts for internal/external links for a website?
I just want to check anchor text of all the links for a specific URL within a website
Link Building | | merkal20050 -
Is it important to have a geo modifier for local SEO link building?
If anyone here is familiar with local SEO, you may have noticed that there are different local results for: "city + Keyword" and just the "keyword". When building links will you end up targeting both with a geo modifier in the link, or is it beneficial to build links without the geo modifer for the keyword?
Link Building | | dignan990