Google/Yahoo bombing is the practice of placing terms
you want a given page to rank for in anchor text that
links to that page. Huh? Ok, here's an example: if I wanted
this page to rank highly for the term "President
of the Internet" I'd create a link like this: President
of the Internet and have all my friends and friendly readers
post that link and text on their sites.
Google Ah hoy! Dropping Anchor on your website...
With enough pages carrying that same text and link
I'd knock the current president from his perch. (He's
also governing in Yahoo, by the way...)
Google bombing is also effective on pages that don't
want to rank for certain terms - Miserable Failure is
one example.
The ability to manipulate search results this way indicates
the weight that the two most searched engines give to
the text webpages use to link to other web pages.
Matt Bailey of The Karcher Group believes search engines
attribute this value to the anchor text because it,
"is very important to the user; it should describe
the content of the target page and the subject matter."
Joe Griffin of SubmitAWebSite described the way text
link works this way: "by identifying your pages
through relevant keyword links you are "telling"
the search engine which keywords the linked pages represent.
The rule applies for both internal and external anchor
text."
"Proper use of anchor text," said Joe, "can
help you show the relevancy of your web pages to key
search engines to help rank for desired keywords."
I wrote to Joe, Matt, and two other SEO experts recently
and asked them about their thoughts on anchor text and
anchor text best practices.
"Anchor text is extremely important to rankings,
especially in Google. I've seen some evidence in Yahoo,
but not to the extent that Google rankings can be influenced,"
said Matt. Jim Hedger of Stepforth said, "I believe
in the value of anchor text."
Anchor Text Best Practices
Matt's anchor text best practices include excellent
general guidelines for you to follow:
1. Do what's best for the user.
2. Make it easily understood by the user.
3. Don't try to hide your intentions.
4. Be honest about the anchor text. What it says is
what you should get.
Jim's anchor text best practices offer some specific
advice that will help you make anchor text decisions
on your site:
Use Judiciously
1/ Navigation maps (the text-links at the bottom of
each page) Nav Maps are a great place to put keyword
enriched anchor text. These text-links tend to be found
at the bottom of each page in a site. An important note
is that these links WILL be used by site visitors and
MUST be created and phrased with live-visitors and SE
Spiders in mind.
2/ Links on the INDEX page
The INDEX page of a site is the most powerful real estate
found that URL. Again, all work on the INDEX page MUST
consider live-visitors before SE Spiders. When keyword-enriching
text on the INDEX page, there are often ways to link
into internal pages. This is a good thing as it pushes
spider traffic while associating the keyword (anchor
text) with the specific page
linked to. An important consideration is that the INDEX
page often has a higher page rank than internal pages.
3/ Links on Internal Pages
Links on internal pages are not as important to search
engine rankings as on the INDEX page. Nevertheless,
each internal page is terribly important to the clients
and can add to a good internal linking strategy.
4/ External Links
Links coming from other URLs should use effective anchor
text. With larger campaigns we can mix and match the
keyword phrases targeted through anchor links in order
to associate keyword phrases with specific internal
pages.
Fathom, a moderator from WebProWorld, offered these
six suggestions to those who want their anchor text
to work well for them:
1. Important link positioning top left to bottom right.
(throwing tons of links at bottom helps little).
2. Exact anchors that best support the content on the
link to page It's great to use tons of links where the
anchor text suggest importance to "web design"
however if the page is specific to "web development"
then the use of "web design" link anchors
will be less effective.
3. The use of "broad" has the benefit of
aiding "broadly" e.g. using links to a website
about "college degrees" where the link indicates
"degrees" has the benefit of gaining associate
degrees, bachelor degrees, masters degrees, as well
as the specific subject matter for the degree itself
link computer science degrees.
A link anchor however about "masters degrees"
dilutes the value to other degrees e.g. bachelor degrees
- so it is a game of tradeoffs.
4. If attempting to do item #3 for "web"
to capture "web design", "website design",
"web development", "website development",
a text link anchor looks quite inappropriate. Thus the
value of image links e.g. <a title="web"
href=""><img alt="Web" src="web.gif"></a>
where the broad term is less apparent and the image
actually reads "web design".
5. Avoid "stop words" such as and, with,
by, from etc.
6. Internal site linking structure has a significant
impact of supporting and propagating weight, relevancy,
and PageRank to similar topical pages... e.g. Google's
indented secondary results for a specific query helps
show this. If you are listed (ranked) with only a single
results listing - your internal linking structure is
likely the cause, and fixing this can help improve overall
results.
Joe of SubmitaWebSite contradicted some of what Fathom
said, however. "In terms of anchor text being found
on relevant vs. irrelevant sites I have yet to see any
substantial proof supporting the claim that relevant
websites will yield a better return in the natural rankings."
From a purely pragmatic perspective though, if you've
got links on a page that's more relevant to your site
you're more likely to get foot traffic in that way rather
than if you've got your text links up on unrelated/irrelevant
sites.
Well, I imagine you're ready to start optimizing your
text links. Remember to focus on those within your site
as well as those your link partners use to mention you.
Anchor text is an important way of showing the search
engines, as well as your visitors, just what they're
getting when they land on the page. And, for now, it's
a powerful way to raise your ranking for particular
terms.
And don't forget to cast your vote (on all your Page
Rank 10 pages) for the new President of the Internet!
About the Author:
Garrett French is the editor of iEntry's eBusiness channel.
You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness
Community Forum.
Read more:
SEARCH
ENGINE INFORMATION RELEASED JULY 2005