learn seo basics anchor text Anchor text is important for SEOAh, anchor text…so important yet so misunderstood. Anchor text is simply another phrase for the label text for your link. Unknown to many bloggers, these words actually have an affect on how search engines perceive the link’s value. In fact, it’s well-known in SEO expert circles that anchor text is the top one or two factors that determine how you rank.

Often times, bloggers make anchor text mistakes without even knowing it. This comes into play the most when they are creating their own backlinks or pingbacks/trackbacks. Here’s an example:

Bad anchor text:

To learn more about what to do for your SEO, click here to see my previous post.

Good anchor text:

Read my previous post to learn more about how to improve traffic for your blog.

Both links bring you to the same article: Top 5 things to do for your SEO. The former is vague and would have no value to search engines while the latter is relevant and should improve search engine rankings.

In a nutshell, here’s how it works. If there were 1000 sites that all had anchor text about improving traffic which all lead to my Top 5 things post, then the article would move up in ranking. Of course, there are other variables but this part is an easy thing to do. You’re creating a link anyway so you might as well make it meaningful to improve the relevance of the destination, whether it’s your own backlink or someone else’s site.

Makes you want to go back and fix all those bad anchor texts used in your old posts, doesn’t it?

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