As an SEO marketer it always amazes me when I see other “SEO professionals” screw up arguably the most important aspect of offpage optimization which is the anchor text in their backlinks.
Just so we are all on the same page, let’s go over some basics as I don’t want to leave anyone behind here.
Offpage Optimization – Anything you are doing off of your website to maximize your SERPS
SERPS – Search Engine Ranking Profile (in more simple terms, where your website ranks).
Keywords - A word of great significance. In search engine optimization terms, a work or phrase you want to rank highly for.
Backlinks – A link (preferably one way) to your website from another website.
One way link – Website “A” links to your website but you are not linking back to Website A. If you did link back to Website A it would be called a receprical link which No Es Buenos for SEO!
Anchor Text – The text used for the part that people click on to go to your website.
Example: This is a free SEO Training. “SEO Training” is my keyword anchor text
Problem 1
What most people do wrong however, is only using generic anchors like
- Click Here
- Visit My Site
Or some other obscure text.
One of the most important factors for how high you rank, is what is being said in your anchor text so if you aren’t making sure it’s your keywords you’ll probably never land on page 1 against even moderate competition.
Just how heavily is anchor text weighed? Well, type “Click Here” into Google and you will see Adobe ranked #1 even ahead of ClickHere.com
Nowhere on Adobe’s site does it say “click here”. They are not trying to rank for “Click Here” and it has no actual relevance to their website.
So why are they ranked #1? Because millions of people are all linking to Adobe with “Click Here” as their anchor text.
Problem 2
When people figure out just how important the anchor text is they tend to go a little crazy with it and then they end up “keyword stuffing”.
Keyword Stuffing – The act of stuffing your keywords
In other words if they want to rank for “Buy Houseplants” (yes I just randomly made that up). The only anchor text they ever use is “Buy Houseplants”.
What happens then is the search engines see that and go, “that’s not natural” because when other people are just naturally linking to you, they are not going to use your chosen keyword 100% of the time. If it doesn’t appear natural then you can actually lose rankings from it.
Best Anchor Text Practices
Use a 70/30 or even 60/40 split. In other words make “Buy Houseplants” your anchor text 60% of the time but the other 40% use longtailed keywords such as “Buy Cheap Houseplants”, “Where to buy houseplants”, etc…
Mix up your 40% however you see fit just make sure it’s diversified and you will see a huge increase in your rankings if you continue to build backlinks on a regular basis.
*UPDATED TO BE GOOGLE PANDA COMPLIANT*
The algorithms have changed and the anchor text in your backlinks have to to be very natural so I am recommending that at least 50% – 60% of your backlinks use generic anchor text (click here, read this article, homepage, etc…) and 50% use a solid mix of related keywords both long tail and short tail.
Stay Positive, Stay Focused!
Robert
