The Most Significant Factor Is Anchor Text

A few years ago Google PageRank (PR) was a very important factor when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, but nowadays it does not mean so much. Actually many experienced webmaster believe that this is just another factor in scoring, nothing more. Beyond a doubt the most essential element of today's SEO is back link anchor text. A back link is an incoming link from another web site. So when we are using the term “anchor text” we are referring to the clickable text that is displayed for a particular link. Usually anchor text is in different color and underlined. Search engines use the displayed anchor text to determine the topic of your site. It helps them a lot to determine how relevant your site is to a specific word or phrase. When you create links for a web site you have to use as much as possible, targeted keyword(s) in the anchor text. This is an extremely important factor when it comes to modern SEO.rnAnalyzing Your CompetitionrnIt is wise, before you start your promotion campaign, to see the keywords that your competitors are using in their anchor text back links. Knowledge of your competitor’s back links will help you see how many links you need to overtake them in the search results. There are plenty of tools that you can use in order to find out the back links for the sites that you are interested in. Just perform a search for the terms “back link analyzer” or “back link check” and take a look at the first 10 results. Many of those tools are free, but always the free version has many limitations, so if you want to perform in-depth analysis you will have to purchase a full product. Look for a back link analysis tool that will help you find the anchor text of all of the back links that point to a specific web site. As mentioned earlier, this will help you uncover your competition and find out how many of the competitors back-links contain the keyword(s) you are targeting. Then you will need to work on getting more back-links with those keyword(s) and sooner or later you will leave them behind in the result pages!rnFor instance, let's assume that you own an online business about watches and you want to get to the number 1 position in Google for the phrase “sport watches”. You should begin your investigation with the site that is listed first in the search results page. Start checking how many back-links (inbound links) the particular site has that contain your desired anchor text. Look for the keywords “sport watches”, “sport” or “watches”. Voilà, now you are in business! You know your primary competitors, you know how many links you need to get ahead of them, so what are you waiting for? Do your best to get more back links with that phrase inside. Note also the sites that are providing links to your competitors, because maybe you can also get links from them as well. Here is another free tip for you. For the above research you can also search Google for “allintitle: keyword” and “allinanchor: keyword”. Never forget that search engines, know that webmasters target keywords on purpose by the use of anchor text, so it is a good practice to mix up the anchor text. If you use exactly the same anchor text for all your inbound links, you will eventually be penalized for attempting to manipulate the search engines.rnOptimizing Links Inside A WebsiternKeep in mind that anchor text is not important for the back-links only. The same rules apply to the links that you will create inside your web site. The internal link text must follow the same rules. You should never create a link that has “Go to the next page” as the anchor text. So always remember to use your targeted words or phrases when creating the internal link structure.rnI hope this article has helped you to get a feel about the anchor text and how to use it beneficially.