Link Reputation and Anchor Text

As much as 80% of the algorithm used by a search engine to rank a web site is dependant upon links to your web site from other web sites – this should be central to any website marketing strategy.

You also must have quality links to make the search engine take notice of your site. No quality links means you will never get a high ranking - it’s as simple as that.

How Linking Points are calculated

The following determine how many “points” your web site scores for a particular search phrase, and therefore how high your site ranks in the search engine results pages:

· Total number of links pointing to your site

· Quality of the sites linking to your site

· Text used in the link to your site (anchor text)

Choose quality before quantity to get ahead. Links from like-themed sites are worth much more than a link from something totally unrelated.

This makes sense if you think of it from the user perspective. If you were on a car site, wouldn’t you be more likely to follow a link to a fellow car site than a cooking site. This is exactly the point that Google is trying to get across. Search engines are trying to provide the user with the best and most relevant information in the search results pages.

Google tracks all your backlink anchor texts as part of their evaluation. Having a lot of links with all the same text appears like a form of spam to Google so you will only get credit for part of those backlinks.

Google bases this whole anchor text assumption based on natural linking. If you did nothing link-based and just built a good site, people will link eventually. It is very unlikely, however, that the anchor text they all use to reference you would be the same. This is the stance Google takes which is why varying your link text is beyond important.

Just having the backlinks helps a ton, but varying those keywords takes that gain you get from all the work to the next level.

Here are some good tips for anchor text:

1. Don’t’ use the URL of the site (yoursite.com) as the anchor text. This does you no good as there is no correlation with keywords or the like.

2. Figure out your target keywords and use varying combinations of them. Google picks up on this and you get a great bonus for varying your anchor texts. For example, if the keywords you might use are ‘link exchange’, try also using ‘exchange links’ or ‘find link partners’ or ‘exchange links with other webmasters’. This appears much more natural. Many times it can make all the difference.