How to Anchor Links – Better Backlinks Series
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
A Link Profile That Is Not Natural
- Credit Cards
- Credit Card Reviews
- Student Credit Cards
- Bad Credit Credit Cards
- Credit Card
- Credit Card Guide
- Compare Credit Cards
- Justin’s Credit Card Guide
- Justin’s Credit Card Guides – Tips & Advice
- Justin
- http://awesomecreditcardguide.com
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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Justin,
This is completly off topic… but it’s good to relax once a while
You’ve just been awareded an Award by CLP
Check it out & Keep up the good work!
Cheers
Sandeep
Thanks Sandeep,
Sorry I took so long to reply. I keep going out of town.
better do follow or no follow ??
dofollow
Google, generally, does not pass value through nofollow.
Justin, I am looking forward to the new post in this series.
Just put it up, sorry on the delay.
There are a couple of really good link exchange programs out there. It is a huge help to be able to work with other web masters when attempting to get links. Makes it considerably easier to get the targeted back links you are looking for :)
Good post Justin.
I agree, but I recommend always working in links for diverse sources. Just in case a network of webmasters get slapped for trading links.
One of my sites was penalized for creating a “Google bomb” I was using only one phrase for building links, I eventually made it to #1 for about 2 weeks then it got dropped. Doesn’t even rank in the top 1000 for that keyword anymore.
Oh well I’ve learned from it and in this game learning from your mistakes = Money :)
BTW I just subscribed. Thanks Justin.
Steve
Try de-optimizing your site a bit and see how you do. Sometimes Google looks at how aligned the anchor is to the site content. They may reduce your rankings if it is “too perfect”.
For example, exact match anchors tend to hurt my rankings for “SEO”. To stop this, I changed my keyword to “SEO Tips” and changed my H1, footer link, and title to include more words, which made my site less optimized for the word “SEO”. The result is I moved up in rankings and bounce around less (though I still bounce around periodically)
Also, if the keyword is highly competitive, don’t be surprised if you bounce a lot. I rank 23 to 27 for “SEO” and I often drop to 70+ for days at a time. New sites also bounce around a lot because they lack authority.
Thanks for these tips. I actually got bombed and I was wondering what I did wrong. I never knew that too much of a good thing can still get Big G angry. Your explanation clarified it. I know better now. Thanks for sharing. ;-)
Quick question….when building links does it make sense to plug your NoFollow links with your related keywords while you tie your known DoFollow links to your targeted keywords?
A good example is that I get lists each month of blogs, forum, profiles which I can get links from. Sometimes by the time I get the list, the site has switched from allowing links to be DoFollow to NoFollow across the board.
Right now I leave the site when I run into that…but maybe I should drop a related keyword phrase on the NoFollow site as I’m there anyway?
I don’t think leaving a keyword in a nofollow will hurt you, but don’t count on it helping much. There are times when nofollow are counted and can help. And other search engines treat it differently, but I wouldn’t count on them being worth much.
If you’re already leaving a comment, sure, but if I leave a comment on a nofollow blog, I’m usually interested in the content or I’m doing it for branding / networking.
thanks!
You made some good points there. I
did a search on the topic and found
most people will agree with your
blog.It will greatly help me in my
SEO
activities. :)