Linking strategy number six. Use your “anchor text” wisely. 

If you take anything away at all from this article then you should know this.

Search engines and Google in particular place a high level of importance on text in your link. It’s one of most powerful and yet most overlooked part of any linking strategy.

Take this text which a customer could use for their link exchange text:

A: Celtic design studio, we produce handmade Celtic rings and jewellery.

And compare with this:

B: Celtic jewellery, Celtic design studio produce handmade Celtic rings and jewellery.

Which would you use?

If you chose example A then you are on path to search engine wilderness. You are only using half of your linking power that you have available.

If you chose example B then you are well on way to dominating your market sector!

How can such a simple contextual change make such a huge difference to your linking campaign?

It’s to do with your keyword research and way that link is presented. Here is how it works:

Taking Google as everybody’s favourite example, we know that a link from site A to site B counts as a vote for that site (B), which means that it must be popular. In turn a link from site C which is an industry portal to site B means that it must be even more popular because site C considers it to be so and is already an important site itself.

Next we examine text in link itself. In first example we have “Celtic design studio” as text displaying in our link. This means that votes from our two linking sites are saying “this site is a good resource for Celtic design studio”.

However in our second example we have “Celtic jewellery” as link or “anchor text” and so our linking sites are now saying “this site is a good resource for Celtic jewellery”!

Does penny drop for you?

Now, this is where keyword research comes into play. If you choose your anchor text unwisely then it could take you forever to play catch up with your competitors. If they have been gaining links for several years then you have a lot of catch up to do. However by choosing an alternative keyword phrase that is not so competitive you can swing link strategy in your favour.

Suffice to say that only one or two inbound links with your keywords in your anchor text can make you rank right up with leaders – that’s how powerful it is!

Make sure you incorporate full power of your linking text into your link exchange strategy.

Making Your Website Stronger

How strong is your website at getting its message across? You can get your message across more strongly and effectively by:

- Using short sentences, bullet points and punchy text - Backing up your message with key selling points and benefits - Reducing number of messages and options you present to visitors - Using carrots: don't be ashamed to entice people to get in touch with you or make an enquiry

Good luck getting that gold medal for your website!

Michael Cheney