Anchor Text Link Explained

Posted at October 7, 2009

I’ve been using the term “anchor text link” quite a bit recently. Since not everyone is familiar with what it means and exactly how it comes into play with search engine optimization, I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain.

Anchor text is the words  you use to link to another page.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say I want to link to another page on this blog, my post about fast seo rankings for example.

The url of that page is http://www.affiliatetreasurechest.com/139/fast-seo-rankings-an-example

The html code for linking from one page to another looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.affiliatetreasurechest.com/139/fast-seo-rankings-an-example/”>fast seo rankings</a>

It will look on the page like this – fast seo rankings

In this example “fast seo rankings” is the anchor text.

chain-linksNote that I am using the key phrase I would like to rank that particular page for in the anchor text.

About 90% of SEO comes down to two things:

  1. Your Title Tag – Which is the title of your page or post
  2. Links and the text you use to link to the page or post

What does this mean for you? When you are trying to get your posts, page or article to rank for a particular keyword or key phrase, spent some time working on incoming links and use your keywords or variations of it in the text that links to your page.

How many links you need to rank well depends on your comptetition. Google your key phrase and look at the results on the first page of google. Do they have the keyphrase in the title tag? (The title tag will be displayed as the blue link at the top of the search result).

Is the key phrase in the description? Google makes it easy to see this at a glance by highlighting your search term anywhere it is used.

If you don’t see your exact key phrase much on the results page, it may be rather easy to rank for that term.

Next look at each of the pages that rank on page one of google. Not the page rank of that page.

I also like to take a look at the links that point to that page. Go to yahoo.com and enter “site:” followed by the link to the page you want to look at and click on Web Search.

This will take you to the yahoo site explorer. I explained how to do this in detail in my web content challenge post. Scroll down to the “Incoming Links” section.

Look at “InLinks” and choose “Except from this domain”. This will show you how many incoming links your competitor has pointing to that page. To outrank him, you’ll need at least that many links, probably quite a few more depending on how strong and old the site is that the page is on.

Time To Take Some Action

Go to your website right now and pick one page. Make sure you know what you want to rank for and that your title has your key phrase in it.

Take a look at your competition and determine how many links you’ll need to rank for this key phrase. I suggest you pick something that will be rather easy to rank for.

Then go out and build a few links to that pge. Write some articles, be a guest blogger on a few related blogs etc.

Then come back and let us know when you’ve gotten a page one ranking in google.

Susanne Myers

P.S. Building links on a regular basis is what accounts for quite a bit of my online success. One of my sites currently has over 60,000 incoming links. I’m working on a few resources to help you build more links on a regular basis. I’ll be ready to reveal more in a few weeks. Keep an eye out for it.

You may also like to read:

  1. Targeted Link Popularity
  2. Link Popularity Tools – How To Find Out Who’s Linking To You
  3. Leave A Comment Gain A Keyword Rich Link
  4. Back Link Building – 3 Simple Ways To Get Started
  5. Link Building Strategies That Are Fast And Easy

SEO

Tags: , , ,

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Comments

8 Responses to “Anchor Text Link Explained”

Leave Comment

(required)

(required)


 Subscribe to Blog Updates