14 replies to this topic

[webdesigners123]

Hello,

I am a bit confused.
I read few threads/articles about text link. Some recommended not to use the keywords that can be found on your website, because this will tell the search engine that you are doing SEO. However some other say that using the right keywords will place your website in a high position for those keywords.

In our case: our domain name is www.webdesigners123.com. We have some back links that the text is "webdesigners123" lately we ask those who link to us to put "Freelance web designers".

Can someone please put some light on this issue.

[Jill]

You definitely want some keyword rich anchor text links pointing to your site.

But don't worry if some use your company name or other things also. Both are good, and you want a bit of them all!

[webdesigners123]

Jill, good to hear from you again

Anyway, can you tell from your experience what is the impact of the keywords in an anchor text on the positions in SER.

What is the preferred way to use this method ?

[Michael Martinez]

Hello,

I am a bit confused.
I read few threads/articles about text link. Some recommended not to use the keywords that can be found on your website, because this will tell the search engine that you are doing SEO. However some other say that using the right keywords will place your website in a high position for those keywords.

Maybe whoever wrote that you should not use the same keywords as found on your Web site is thinking you should vary the anchor text of inbound links? I cannot imagine a good reason for not using the keywords found on the Web site.

In our case: our domain name is www.webdesigners123.com. We have some back links that the text is "webdesigners123" lately we ask those who link to us to put "Freelance web designers".

Is anyone searching for "freelance web designers"? Doesn't look like there is a great deal of activity on that expression (but it could vary from week to week - so don't take that as an objection to the targeted search expression).

Frankly, I don't understand why you don't just put the links and anchor text on your own pages. They'll have the same effect.

People just don't seem to get the message. Google and Yahoo! don't care where they find the links, as long as they are good, clean links.

[webdesigners123]

Frankly, I don't understand why you don't just put the links and anchor text on your own pages.  They'll have the same effect.

People just don't seem to get the message.  Google and Yahoo! don't care where they find the links, as long as they are good, clean links.

Can you please explain your last comment.
If I get you right, you would like us to put links in our website, pointing to our website, with the anchore text ?
Sorry but we are not that familiar with SEO.

[torka]

If you're fairly new to SEO, you might want to check our [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php/topic/833-tips-for-new-seos/]Tips for Newbies[/url] thread. It will help explain a lot.

--Torka

[robwatts]

In terms of anchor text, try and vary it a little too.

You can't dictate how people to link to you, but you can certainly help the process.

If you create good varied content, you might find that one particular spin off is that you will get good varied links as a result.

You could for example, write articles about the many many varied aspects of good ( and bad) web design. Offering tips and useful examples.

People will link to useful or interesting stuff. You can even help them in the process by leaving some link-to-this-article html code on the bottom of such pages.

[Jill]

can you tell from your experience what is the impact of the keywords in an anchor text on the positions in SER

It's GOOD to have your keywords in your anchor text.

And if you're not buying links in bulk, it's fine to request the same anchor text for all your links, imo.

[robwatts]

..it's fine to request the same anchor text for all your links, imo.

Well, I wouldn't say its bad thing to, but if it were I, then I'd try and get some variance in there too.

My reasoning on this? I just think that as algos mature and search engineers look at ways of reducing some of the more blatant keyword anchor text manipulation, then over time one could fall foul of a filter that looked for high singular anchor text occurence..

In the real world, .the reality is that a great deal of people link to stuff in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. People use words like link, here, this, web address, website, domain name, sentence-of-long-words-, paragraphs, images, and of course, keyword rich anchor text.

If you can vary this and actually get people to use a combination of relevant words and phrases when linking to you, then in the long term, this will stand you in good stead. All IMHO of course

[RyanBlank]

Can you please explain your last comment.

i think, but am not sure, that Michael means..

If you have, let's say.. a constant text navigation area that appears on every page of your site.. and in that navigation you have a link that says 'freelance web designers' which points to a page about freelance web designers.. that is considered anchor text to the SE's. which in theory would bolster that keyword and the relevance of the page the link leads to..

The point is (again, i can't be sure what Michael meant), anchor text is anchor text.. regardless of if it's on someone elses site or your own. you could also place this anchor text in other areas of the site that do not appear on every page.. like in the content of a certain section that may reference another section of the site..

[Michael Martinez]

i think, but am not sure, that Michael means..

If you have, let's say.. a constant text navigation area that appears on every page of your site.. and in that navigation you have a link that says 'freelance web designers' which points to a page about freelance web designers.. that is considered anchor text to the SE's. which in theory would bolster that keyword and the relevance of the page the link leads to..

Not exactly. I mean, if you have a page about blue dogs, and you want to rank well for blue dogs (and you feel you can only do this if you have inbound linkage for "blue dogs"), you can create another page that summarizes the content on your site and include on that page a sentence that says, "And you have checked out our blue dogs web page?", wherein you use "blue dogs" as the link anchor text.

You CAN do this in standard navigation, but you can also do it anywhere on your Web site. Why on Earth would anyone NOT want to do that?

The point is (again, i can't be sure what Michael meant), anchor text is anchor text.. regardless of if it's on someone elses site or your own.  you could also place this anchor text in other areas of the site that do not appear on every page.. like in the content of a certain section that may reference another section of the site..

There you go.

A link is a link is a link. If you want your own internal links to be important, place them on your most important pages. If you don't care if the links are important, put them wherever.

Should you create a page for the sole sake of linking to one one other page? Of course not. You shoudl create a page that will help your visitors. Put enough content on your site, and you'll find that you naturally write summary pages all over the place.

Edited by Michael Martinez, 27 October 2005 - 05:10 PM.

[RyanBlank]

Not exactly.

this is why i'm not usually in the business of speaking for Michael. he will always add a 'not exactly'

[Jill]

Well, I wouldn't say its bad thing to, but if it were I, then I'd try and get some variance in there too.

But you cut out where I said:

if you're not buying links in bulk

If you're just going about getting a handful of regular links, you don't need to worry about variance.

[webdesigners123]

If you're just going about getting a handful of regular links, you don't need to worry about variance.

What do you mean by "regular links".

What we are doing is we have a directory (as you can see in the signature).
We ask for reciprocal link in return to include their website in our directory.
We also have an affiliate program. we provide banner and text link to be use.

[Randy]

Think about it like a person would and you'll be pretty close to what the search engines are looking for webdesigners123.

As a surfer what would you think if I told you XYZ.com --which was supposedly a resource about Red Lederhosen-- had 1,000 other sites linking to theirs and every single one of those links contained exactly the same text? Every text link said "Red Lederhosen" and every image link had that in the IMG ALT attribute?

You would look at it and say, "Well, those aren't natural is it? Someone has worked quite hard to get all of those links to say the same thing."

That's exactly what the search engines are going to say too! Even though the site is all about Red Lederhosen, it's obvious that those links aren't natural.

But let's say that the site is actually a good resource about Red Lederhosen. So it would be completely natural for a significant number of the backlinks to contain the phrase. Either by itself or as part of a larger phrase. It would also be completely normal that some sites would link to the site just by the domain name. Or with anchor text that really had nothing at all to do with Red Lederhosen.

That's the goal when you're building your links. Make it look natural. Don't micromanage things to such a degree that you end up having every single backlink have the exact same anchor text.

Does that help?