How Search Engines Use Anchor Text

Search engines use anchor text to help them figure out what the hyperlinked
page is about. So, as you can see, getting anchor text backlinks with
relevant phrases in the anchor text is pretty important if you want the
search engines to rank you for a particular keyword phrase.

In fact, anchor text is such an important factor in ranking a page that
pages can rank for a keyword phrase even when that phrase does not appear in
the url on the page!

There are several cases where this has happened, but perhaps the most famous
is where the Adobe Reader download page ranked number 1 for the search term
'click here' for many years even though those words were nowhere on the
page. So many people had linked to that page using the anchor text 'click
here' that it got to the number 1 spot without any on page SEO for the term.

Search engines place a large importance on external anchor text (links
coming in from other sites) and some importance on internal anchor text
(links from within your own site) when ranking a page so it stands to reason
that you should make getting anchor text backlinks with your target keyword
phrases a priority.

One important thing to note is that it is widely thought that if two links
on the same page target the same url, that only the first link is counted by
Google so you want to be sure that you use your desired anchor text in that
first link.

my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws

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