Anchor text strategy: how does it work?

One more important part of your linkbuilding strategy, closely related to your Keyword Strategy, is the Anchor Text of your inbound links. This is where your Keyword Strategy meets your Linkbuilding strategy. When talking about Keyword Strategy you have to choose with which keywords you want to position your website by taking into account basically three main criteria: Keyword search volume, keyword relevance and competition for the keyword. That’s the first step in any SEO strategy, once that’s decided, you can boost your search engine rankings for those selected keywords by using those same keywords as anchor text in the inbound links you get to your site. Why is that? Why does it work this way? When you enter a keyword string on Google’s search box, one of the things Google does is to look on its index how many links it has with that same keyword string and where do they point to. If lots of links with an anchor text similar or equal to what you entered in the search box point to the same URL, that page will show up on top results.

Let me explain again with a simple example. There are two websites that do exactly the same, both sell Cotton T-Shirts. Both are perfectly well optimized in Search Engine terms. Both have the same tags, age and number of inbound links. There are only two differences between both websites: their URL and the anchor text of their inbound links. One is called www.cottont-shirts.com and the other one is called www.555.com . Other things being equal when someone enters the keyword “Cotton T-shirts” in Google’s Search box, the website www.cottont-shirts.com would have to appear first, because as we explained before, it helps a lot that the keywords entered into the search box are contained in your URL. But is there a possibility that 555 could come up higher in the rankings? Could it beat cotton-shirts.com ? The answer is yes, if one is managing correctly the anchor text of its inbound links and the other not. Let’s imagine both sites have 20 inbound links, but their anchor texts are different.

The newbies and not so smart guys at www.cottont-shirts.com had the following text in all of it inbound links:

- “For the best deals in Cotton T-Shirts click here to visit our store”

o The link points to the URL www.cottont-shirts.com, but the anchor text is “Click here to visit our store”

On the other hand, the SEO savvy guys at 555.com had the following text for its inbound links:

- “You’ll find the best Cotton T-Shirts at 555. To visit our store click on the following link: Cotton T-Shirts ”

o The link points to the URL http://www.555.com , but the anchor text is “Cotton T-Shirts”

What will be the end result of this hypothetical example? When you type the words “Cotton T-Shirts” into Google’s search box Google will check its index and Think: “I have 20 different links with the Keywords Aluminum Furniture that point to the website www.555.com and none pointing to www.cottont-shirts.com . Therefore for these specific combination of words the website 555.com is more relevant (and will appear higher in the ranks), even though cottont-shirts.com contains the searched keywords on its URL.

This is where your Keyword Strategy meets your Linkbuilding strategy. You use the keywords you selected at the beginning, to be your anchor text in your inbound links and this is how you’ll improve dramatically you rankings on Search Engines. The more inbound links (with higher PR better) with a given anchor text that matches your selected keywords the better results you’ll have.

Keyword strategy basics: Where to start in your SEO Strategy

Lots of people rush into Tags, URL’s and code optimizing without realizing that the first step in any SEO strategy will probably have nothing to do with that. Starting to correct code, optimize tags, URL’s and metatags without carefully having planned a coherent “Keyword Strategy” beforehand is like throwing all your soldiers into a battlefield without analyzing the terrain, the enemy, your weapons and your tactics.

Your “Keyword strategy” means in other words which are the keywords that you choose to position your website with. To create an efficient and effective keyword strategy, 4 main aspects need to be considered:

- Keyword Search volume: The search volume of a given keyword determines the total potential traffic that this keyword can drive to your website. To give an example, the monthly volume of searches in Google of the keyword “MBA” is 5’000,000 while the volume of searches of the keyword “executive MBA” is just 135,000. If you’d manage to get top listings for the keyword “MBA” you would be in a very good position to capture a big slice of the traffic generated by these 5’000,000 searches, much more than if you manage to get first position with the keyword “135,000” where your potential visits are just 135,000. If you have an Adwords Account, you can use the “Keyword Tool” to estimate monthly traffic of a given keyword you’re analyzing. Another useful tool you can use to find relations of search volume and trends to help you decide which keywords to choose in your keyword strategy is Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)

- Keyword relevance: It’s not just the volume of searches what matters but also how relevant it is to your website. Let’s say you could hire the best SEO consultant in the world and he/she would manage to get you number one ranking for the most searched keyword in Internet. Is that something you really want (driving tons of irrelevant traffic to your site)? Would the visits that having first position for this keyword really convert in sales for your business? Of course not. This is an extreme example but the reasoning still applies: If you sell “Peruvian Gold Jewelry” Would you choose to position your site with the keyword “Jewelry”? Maybe not a good idea since your website only sells Peruvian Jewelry. Try to position your site with a keyword that is too general, like “Jewelry” in our example and you’ll end up receiving thousands Low quality visits, meaning by low quality visits that don’t end up in conversions and have a high bounce rate.

- Competition for the keyword: Not only the search volume and relevance of the keyword are important in which keywords to choose but also the competition you’ll find for it makes a big difference. If you want to be top ranked for the keyword “tailor made Bolivian kitchen appliances” it will be very easy; guess how many companies exist in this industry and how many websites would try to compete for this keyword. Compare that to trying to compete for position number one in “Free Downloads”, where tens of thousands of websites worldwide are trying daily to get ranked on first page. It’s not the same to try to get number one rank for a keyword with only 4 companies competing that number one rank for a keyword with 1 million sites competing… Remember, regardless of how many companies compete for top positions, Google’s first page of results will always have only 10 available spots to show.

- “Goal Conversion” keyword: You can use Google’s Goal Conversion tracking code to actually measure with which keywords your customers are buying from your store. For example, if you had 12 articles sold last month, this tracking system can tell you with which keywords each of these 12 customers who bought from you got to your website. This information should also be used to decide with which keywords you want to position your website.

Your keyword strategy consists in balancing these four criteria to choose wisely with which keywords you want to position your site. Remember:

· Search volume: Don’t go for too general keywords but when narrowing them down, always look that the keyword you choose has monthly volume of searches that is worth the effort.

· Relevance: Other things being equal, always try to go for keywords closely related to what you actually sell. Don’t try to position your site with words that are somehow related, or more or less close. Go for what you sell.

· Competition: Very competitive keywords will require a much bigger and continuous effort. Think on your available resources and in the importance of the keyword for your business before deciding to go for a keyword with lots of competition.

· Goal Conversion: Always use this data to decide with which keywords you need to position your site. At the end, this is the only 100% sure way to measure if a keyword is generating sales or achieving your website’s goals.

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