Tell Me Why Anchor Text Is Authoritative In SEO?
The anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. The words in the anchor text can greatly affect your search engine ranking. This text is also referred to as the link label. While anchor text might not concern the link’s actual text, it is more useful to readers if it is. So be sure that such text links give a clear indication of the destination’s content. If search engines can use the anchor text to determine your page’s content, they will improve your ranking in search results.
Therefore, careful use of anchor text can increase the number of hits your pages receive. Do not use “click here” as your link label, since rarely gives search engines any relevant information. Text backlinks lead others to your pages. Often backlinks are referred to as inbound links. A page can achieve top Google ranking without using the search phrase on the destination page. This type of ranking is reffered to as “Google bombing” (or simply link bombing). Some of these link bombs are pranks, such as the famous 2003 Googlebomb leading visitors to the White House page for President George W. Bush — as the number one result when anyone typed in the phrase “miserable failure.” Link bombs boosted the rankings of those who use humorous phrases as backlinks to win a high ranking. The least used phrases result in higher ranking whenever it is searched. On the other hand, a widely used term gets pages of search results.
However, Google announced in January 2007 that a reduction in “Google bombing” was a result of enhancements made to the search process. You can help other sites link to your pages by having copy and paste HTML for them to put on their pages. This way, you determine the link text. But be careful — if your site is all about shopping, you should avoid having “Shopping” as the phrase in every link to your site. Exercise care when doing this as it can cause “over-optimizing.” If you overuse your search terms, the search engines may penalize you for keyword stuffing or spamming. On the other hand, most search engines, and especially Google, give higher rankings to websites that have many high-quality backlinks.
Two examples of quality backlinks are:
1) optimized keywords linking to your website
2) The content on the site pointing to yours covers the same topic
When planning your pages, here are a few good strategies for you to use anchor text links:
1) Point links from other website
2) Internal links inside your website
3) Links from your site’s home page, especially in site navigation maps
Finally, keep in mind that you are trying to reach visitors, not just search engines, so the phrases in your anchor text links must make sense to readers, in order to be useful to them, and thus to drive more traffic to your site.
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