Link Building: The Anchor Text

In this article we will discuss link building practices. Instead of focusing on methods, however, we focus on what you need to do when you put the methods into action. Specifically, we're going to pay special attention to anchor text: what it is, why it's important, and how to use it correctly so that the search engines will notice you and not penalize you.

Search Engines and Links

In the early days search engines relied on meta-data and on-page analysis to analyze and rank websites. Search engine optimizers decoded ranking algorithms and started stuffing keywords in meta tags, titles, H tags and paragraphs, producing low value, spammy, but high-ranking pages.

Search engines were flooded with spam, because it was too easy to manipulate results. There was a need for better algorithms. That’s when Google arrived with Page Rank and changed the game. Instead of looking at on-page factors, page rank analyzed links throughout the World Wide Web. The formula was clearly a winner, as Google gave credit to super-hub sites in most industries and left the spam out. A new era of SEO arrived – the era of links.

Search engines, especially Google, look at hundreds of link factors. Some of those factors include:

• The anchor text of the link

• The site from which the link comes

• The age of the link

• The page on which the link is located

• The text surrounding the link

• The real page rank of the page (not the one shown in the toolbar)