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Small Business & Online Marketing
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Create Powerful Link and Anchor Text
Create Powerful Link and Anchor Textby Rick Hendershot, Website Traffic Strategies A link is essentially a free advertisement on someone else's site pointing back to yours. So write it like a well-thought-out advertisement. Here are some guidelines... 1. Give your link text some length -- at least two sentences. If all "link pages" consisted of a short paragraph or two instead of five or six words, these link pages would have "content" and be more valuable. Most webmasters want substance (content) instead of those short descriptions. This will also make your listing stand out from the crowd. Short descriptions are LAZY descriptions. 2. Pack your link text with your most important keywords. You don't have to "hype" you site. Just pack your description with your most important information. This is called creating a keyword-rich "context". 3. Make sure your "anchor text" includes your most important keyword. Google considers this quite important. See the examples at the end of this post. 4. Create more than one version of this link text. A long one should be roughly 200 characters. A short one might be less than 100 characters. Having two or three different versions and lengths of your link text ready to go will make your life a lot easier when it comes to actually exchanging links. 5. Mix up your anchor text. If you are doing some serious "power linking" in an attempt to create hundreds, even thousands of inbound links, don't use the same anchor text all the time. The Search Engines may interpret repetition of the same link patterns as "unnatural" and manipulative. So use different versions of your anchor text and create different link text "contexts". For example... Free Card business card displays The Free Card business card display system is a unique small business opportunity. Free Card displays are located in high traffic areas and loaded with full color business cards on behalf of advertisers. Cards are automatically dispensed to interested consumers. Notice that the anchor text is not simply "www.freecard.com" (the URL) or even FreeCard.com (what some might consider the "site name") but rather a description of the product, including the most important keyword, "business card displays". Further, I have built more of this client's most important keywords into the description accompanying the anchor text. This enhances the "relevance" of the link page where your link appears. And here is another example... Concentrate on building keyword-rich contexts in which your subject matter is
clearly stated and your links can be clearly associated with the subject matter
that is most "relevant" to your site. This is the best way to insure they will
create an impact. |