Hi, I just wondered, how much 1(one) link with an anchor text is equivalent to links without anchor texts? For example, Is 1 link with an anchor text of the targeted keyword(s) better than 3 or 4 links without it? Or not so much differences? (sorry, my English is not good enough to compose the proper sentence, but hope you understand what I mean) I am asking this provided that the links are coming from the same kind of sites (similar page ranks and similar topics), and the targetted site is optimized internally for the keyword.
I don't know if it is possible to actually quantify the difference. When you don't use anchor text, the link just helps your domain's overall link profile. This only gives a very small boost to all of your rankings (mostly for your homepage rankings). A link with anchor text helps your domain's overall link profile just as much, but it also gives extra relevancy boosts for the whole anchor text and the individual words. So it is definitely a good idea to use anchor text for your links wherever possible.
For a natural link profile you want to be getting links which don't contain keyword rich anchor text, so as part of your SEO campaign get both anchor text links and just normal links such as "click here" and people linking to your URL, etc. A non anchor text link on a very strong page will still be of great benefit, because it will improve the trust rank for the domain.
Personally I don't agree that you need some generic anchor text as well. It wouldn't make sense for that to be a requirement. Instead, just gets links with a wide variety of keywords. Search engines won't be looking for links that say 'click here', but they may be looking at what percent of your links use each individual word.
Well, if you have good content this is taken care of automatically because others will want to share your website by linking to it.
I'm trying to get links with anchor text but sometimes you can't. In that case, I wonder if it is worth the effort. Also I have heard Google "might" think if there is no link just says "click here", that looks natural, there is something wrong. I have many websites and I get some natural links but it's limited to the sites which give free information. But I also have purely commersial websites and it's difficult to get "natural" links.Putting a lot of information on the site is good but I don't want to divert potential customers to free information. Anyway, If you have more opinions about my original question, that would be great. Thanks.
This is the stance I take on link building: almost every link has the potential to help in some way. So provided that those links are from quality sites, it is worthwhile even if you can't use link anchor text. You still want to build up a strong link profile and those links might provide some direct traffic. Just make sure you do also get some keyword rich links to establish relevancy for specific keywords. Those kinds of links are easy enough to get through article submissions, blog commenting and forum signatures.
lol I got negative rep for the advice I gave in this thread. Apparently having a natural link profile is not good for SEO.
My belief is this, you need to have links of all different types. You should have links that point to the URL. Links that point to your website name without the TLD and also links that utilize anchor text, but switch up the anchor text for best results - in my opinion.
I think the value of anchor text is not a fixed value, but depends on the context (nearby content, page title,...). As for a site dealing with Mexico travel, a link with a correct anchor text (let's say "Mexico travel") in a page fully dedicated to a quite different topic (let's say casinos) may have not much more value than a link without anchor (lets say "www" or "click here") in the same page. This is my feeling, I have no evidence.
lol the advice in this thread is shocking Well said, thats what its all about natural linking methods. Its not natural to have all your anchor text optimised Anchor text has MASSIVE importance though, its how google related the link to the link destination The more times you have a link with "dogs" the more google will associate your site with dogs Click here why are they ranking for this? Because so many people just link to those sites with "click here"
dcristo I was the one who gave you -rep, not that it affects you lol. Using lousy link anchor text is not making your link profile more natural. That is just wasting a good chance to get a boost for certain keywords. I would absolutely never create an external backlink that says 'click here'. There is other ways to make your link profile look natural other than by using totally irrelevant words. Just use a wide variety of anchor texts and you will spread your links across many individual words. There is nothing wrong with optimizing all of your link anchor text. You will never get penalized for that.
OMG! An anonymous negative repper speaks out! I care about my green blobs. Dude, the keyword "click here" is irrelevant. The point I was making was not to specifically use this link text but to have a balanced link profile using link text others would naturally use to link to you. And what you are talking about is varying up your anchor text, this is a strategy you should use to in addition to what I am saying. At the end of the day, if you can get a strong link but it can't contain targeted anchor text, you should still get it!
Thanks everyone. I'm glad that my question was obviously not a "stupid" question. I'll try to use anchor text as often. But going back to my original question, do you have any thoughts about how different the affect? Let's say, one site(Site A) is talking about Toyota cars. Title tags, <h> tags, keyword density etc are totally perfectly optimized for "Toyota Cars". And let's say this site gets 50 backlinks just saying "www." or "click here". Another site(site B) supposing it's also perfectly optimized for "Toyota Cars" but only got 10 backlinks, but they all have anchor text of "Toyota cars", does Site B get higher rank with "Toyota Cars" then, do you think? Of course I'm supposing that the links are all coming from sites which have similar strength and of similar topic(s). Just want to hear your opinions.
the one with kw will add PR and tell google you are relevant to that kw the one without will add PR however as a link will not benefit the serp but the more the PR the more all the relevance factors are increased i.e high PR will make the kw in you copy rank better so as conclusion a link with kw in anchor will be better as it gives both PR and relevance vote
Honestly, you do need to get some of those crappy links with no anchor text just to look natural, like others have already said. It sucks, but just something you have to do. As far as how much they help, it's my belief that they do in fact give a small boost to your entire site, but it will be a very negligible amount. Every link helps though...
I would call links without anchor text completely worthless - but a link without an anchor isn't going to help anyws here as much one that does include your anchor.