11 replies to this topic

[tcolling]

I would appreciate your help with a question about anchor text for internal links.

I own a small business that provides non-medical in-home caregivers to elderly people in their own homes, and we have created a website for that business.

We have a Services page on our website that describes those caregiver services. That Services page is optimized for the keyword phrase, “Caregivers in San Diego County”.

We publish blog posts three or four times each week. Each of those blog posts contain useful information, and each is optimized for some variation of one of our targeted keyword phrases, all of which are variations of wordings combining descriptions of what we do, with mentions of the cities in our service area.

We do this because we believe that people would search for such phrases when looking for services like ours, in their city (or their elderly parents’ city). For example, the keyword phrase that we optimize one post for might be “Caregivers in Oceanside” and the phrase for the next one might be “Personal Attendants in Vista” (Oceanside and Vista are two cities in our service area).

We could create one or two internal links in the body of each post back to the earlier-described “Services” page, with anchor text. However, that’s where we have this question:

Should we create those internal links with anchor text that matches the targeted keyword phrase for the blog post, such as “Personal Attendants in Vista”, or should we always create them with anchor text that matches the targeted keyword phrase of the Services page, “Caregivers in San Diego County”?

I have searched for the answer to this question here on HR and I haven’t found a post that is exactly on point. If I have overlooked somewhere here where this question is already answered, I apologize.

Thank you for your help!

- Tim

[Jill]

You should link to whichever URL is the most relevant to the user for more information on the subject.

[tcolling]

You should link to whichever URL is the most relevant to the user for more information on the subject.

Thanks, Jill. I appreciate your help.

Just to be clear: I know that what is best for the user is the first priority.

I guess my question is, if I created a separate page with virtually the same content as our "Services" page, but with a different Title that matches the blog post's targeted keyword phrase, would there be any greater SEO benefit for us with respect to that targeted keyword phrase than if we just linked to the original Services page?

Thanks,
Tim

[Jill]

if I created a separate page with virtually the same content as our "Services" page, but with a different Title that matches the blog post's targeted keyword phrase

That would just be silly.

You seem to be under the impression that a blog post is different than any other page of your site. They have no special power.

[tcolling]

That would just be silly.

You seem to be under the impression that a blog post is different than any other page of your site. They have no special power.

Thanks, Jill. I appreciate your help.

I'm not misunderstanding the value or power of blog posts. What I'm not real clear on is the value of internal links ANY sort, from ANY internal page to any other internal page, as far as SEO value goes.

It appears to me that there isn't any particular SEO value to them. If that's the case, then that's ok with me. I don't want to manufacture a whole lot of internal links that don't serve any useful purpose for the users of our site, unless it happened to be a big help for SEO purposes.

Thanks,
Tim

[Michael Martinez]

I'm not misunderstanding the value or power of blog posts. What I'm not real clear on is the value of internal links ANY sort, from ANY internal page to any other internal page, as far as SEO value goes.

Too much of a good thing spoils it.

The law of diminishing returns kicks in for just about everything in SEO.

You should create content and embed links in ways that benefit your visitors and not worry so much about the "SEO value" or benefit.

[Jill]

I don't want to manufacture a whole lot of internal links that don't serve any useful purpose for the users of our site, unless it happened to be a big help for SEO purposes.

Google is looking for things that are helpful to your users. So definitely don't do it if it's not helpful to them.

[tcolling]

Thanks for all the great replies and advice. I appreciate everyone's help!

[OrdAllenbea]

Part of Google's 200+ factors on rankings are semantically related keyphrases. If doing internal linking then those links should be linking to a page that does contain that keyphrase. If your internal link is "Personal Attendants in Vista" then the page you are linking to should contain that word. This makes the link related to the content in Google's eyes.

You do not always have to use a main keyword, sometimes you can use a semantically related keyword to the main keyword (ie: kittens is semantically related to kitty or cat).

[chrishirst]

Actually Google doesn't really "care" if the anchor text is "related" to the content or not, that's why "Google bombing" still works and why there are so many strange results that apear in the SERPs. Read this thread for example

Anchor text should tell the VISITORS what the page is about

[Jill]

Also be sure to read Karon's comment here: http://www.highranki...h...st&p=322127

[tcolling]

Thanks again to all for jumping in and helping answer my question. I appreciate everyone's help.

- Tim