Don’t be Link-Lovin’ in Vain (Judiciously using ‘Anchor Text’)

We’ve been researching and discussing the best ways to use links within a blog to promote conservatism online. [See Enough Already, we're Blog UNRolling, and Using (and Abusing?) rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank.] The following is adapted from information sent to Ft. Hard Knox by an author who wishes to remain anonymous.

The “anchor text” or “link label” is the visible text in a hyperlink – the part you click to be taken to a new website.

For Google and other search engines, it does make a difference what words you use in the anchor text of web or blog postings. Many webmasters and bloggers don’t realize this. Thus, today’s brief tutorial.

Let’s say that you’ve read an article you wish to share with your readers in a blog post.

In the normal course of events, you’re likely to post an entry that says,

Conservatives R Us wrote a nice piece about the Conservatism Online over the weekend. Check it out (hyperlinked)here(endhyperlink).

The “here” in that sentence is the hyperlink or anchor text.

By doing it that way, you just lost an opportunity to promote the Conservatives R Us article to a higher ranking in search results, when someone searches for “Conservatism Online” on the internet (See Search Engines: Your Search is Only as Good as your Keywords). If the newspaper article is one you’d like someone to find when they search for your organization, the correct way to write the blog entry is:

Conservatives R Us wrote a nice piece about (hyperlinked)Conservatism Online(endhyperlink) over the weekend. Good information there – check it out!

Note that in both cases, the link takes the reader to the same article. The only difference is in how you labeled the hyperlink; in one case, it is labeled with the word “here” and in the other case, it is labeled with the words, “Conservatism Online”.

If you get a few appropriately anchored hyperlinks posted on the internet, including on websites you control, you can have a very good influence over time on what appears in the first few pages of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) when someone does an internet search for your organization.

Other examples:

(hyperlink)’Our favorite up-and-coming blogger’(endhyperlink) was on FoxNews the other day talking about activism online.

is a good practice, whereas:

‘Our favorite up-and-coming blogger’ was on the (hyperlink)FoxNews(endhyperlink) the other day talking about activism online.

wastes a search optimization opportunity for the name of the blogger you’re trying to promote.

Since nothing is ever that simple on the internet, links for further reading:

• Wikipedia: Anchor Text
• SEO Book: Google’s Depreciation of Anchor Text
• Search Engine Land: Google Now Reporting Anchor Text Phrases