How to Anchor Links – Better Backlinks Series

May.24, 2009 in Online money

I’ve been a bit off topic recently, so it is time to get back into the trenches and pump out some SEO advice. So I’m putting together the “better backlinks series”, which, so far, will be a 39 post series on improving your backlink profile. I’m going to try to cover a lot of bases with this series and really improve the amount of link building advice on this domain. If you want to keep up with it, I recommend subscribing.

Anchoring Keywords

You don’t want to anchor your links like a newbie. This a basic concept in SEO link building, yet it is often forgotten or misunderstood. The basic idea behind Google is that links provide votes for your site and the words used in that link describe your content to Google. So if you want Google to know you’re about “credit cards”, then people need to reference you with the keyword phrase “credit cards”. I’ve shown this before, but I think Allyn Hane does an amazing job explaining the basics of linking.

From Allyn’s post on the Basic Definition Of “Links”

It gets a bit more complicated than that though.

Anchor Text Distribution

If you site is about “credit cards”, you may be tempted to run out and only get links for that exact phrase, but this is bad for two reasons.

Creates a “Google Bomb” from spamming the same anchor text, which may result in a penalty
Limits your optimization to one exact phrase

Too often people only worry about the Google Bomb aspect of spamming one phrase, but it is actually BAD SEO independent of the Google Bomb concept.

The success of SEO is rarely tied to the ranking for one specific phrase. Getting hung up on one phrase is a newbie mistake. Take some time to read my posts on longtail keywords and semantics for SEO.

As an SEO, I would rather rank in the top 5 for 300 different terms, than rank #1 for the best term in the niche. The first scenario would likely provide me more traffic and that traffic is more likely to be targeted.

You can relate anchor text distribution to the idea of keyword density. Instead of repeating one phrase, it is better to mix in multiple related and long tail variations of your keywords.

Examples of Anchor Variations

•    Justin’s blog about Credit Cards
•    Student credit cards
•    Compare credit cards
•    Credit cards for people with bad credit
•    Credit card guide

And yes, every single one of these phrases helps for the primary phrase “credit card”, but they have the added benefit of picking up phrases related to: student, compare, guide, bad, and bad credit. This helps us dramatically increase the number of phrases we can rank for, while also avoiding a Google bomb penalty.

A Natural Link Profile

You’ll see a lot of talk about “appearing natural” when building links. If you anchor your links in a predictable way, it becomes obvious that you have manipulated your link profile. Google hates link manipulation, so you want to stay under the radar.

A lot of people give Google too much credit and claim they have amazing detection techniques. I’ll agree that Google is great at detecting linking patterns, but there are a huge number of sites that get away with it. The problem isn’t if Google can detect it today, but if Google can detect it in two years. I see a lot of sites ranking that are obviously manipulating. The concern for them is that a Google algo update may wipe out their site. The SEO community has seen this multiple times.

To reduce your risk, it is valuable to build a profile that “appears” natural.

4 Most Common Anchors in a Natural Profile

Site Name
Site URL
Owner’s Name
Page Title

The majority of webmasters link to other sites with one of the 4 anchors above.

A Fairly Natural Link Profile

Ranked by number of anchors for each phrase

Justin’s Credit Card Guide
Credit Card Guide
Justin
Guide on Credit Cards
http://awesomecreditcardguide.com
Justin’s Credit Card Guides – Tips & Advice
Credit Cards
Credit Card Reviews
Student Credit Cards

So anchoring is important, but be cautious when you anchor your links, so that you do not over optimize your backlink profile.

Tips to Improve Your Anchor Distribution

Don’t anchor the exact match of your main keyword more than 25% of the time
Use your site title as the anchor periodically. (If you do your title right, this should still be a keyword anchored link)
Get people to keyword anchor when they reference your name. Instead of “from Justin’s blog”, ask them to say “from Justin’s SEO blog”
Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to identify related keywords and work through them as anchors
Focus on having a diverse mix of anchor text combinations instead of many links on a specific term
Do stuff so you actually earn real natural links (lol…gasp…). If you have natural links being produced, then you don’t have to worry as much about “appearing natural” when doing SEO because your natural links are already creating diversity for you and will mask your link building.

I hope this helps you guys when you’re getting anchored links for your site. I have many more post coming in the better backlinks series. If you’re interested in keeping up on these posts, I recommend subscribing.

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