how important is anchor text?

when used in a back link to your site?

 

Almost everybody here wil tell you it is the single most important factor.

 

it's all important!

type "miserable failure" into google... #1 whitehouse.gov GWB biography... no mention of it on the page it's all down to leftwing bloggers! (on a massive scale linking back to his page using that phrase as the anchor)

 

well i just added about 60 back links with achcor text with pr raning from 0-7

 

what is the meaning of anchor text ?

 

It is the text that you use to link to another site
<a href='site_url'>ANCHOR TEXT</a>

 

Example: Boating sales and information

That's you link with great anchore.

 

this is what your site is all about...

 

Have to agree that Anchor text and Page title are the 2 most important elements in SEO. Your anchor text and page title should be targetting the same phrases. (although obviously your page title needs to do more as it is also needed to encourage click throughs from the SERP's).

Also too many people are ignoring the anchor text of internal links.

 

you're right

 

I know, hehe

 

A brief explanation of why anchor text is important (thought I would add this rather than just say IT IS IMPORTANT .

There are 3 elements to a link.
1) anchor page (the page that has the link)
2) target page (the page you go to if you click the link)
3) anchor text. (the actual text you click on to go to the new page)

The anchor text with regard the search engines algorithms, is deemed to be on both the anchor AND target pages, so the Anchor text is actually ADDED to your target page. There is also now some debate as to whether snippets of surrounding text are used, (personally I think this is possibly true, but to what degree is another matter).

In the early days of the web there was text, and some of that text would be blue and underlined, and the text would be in context e.g another consideration for open heart surgery is the cardio vascular stress caused by blah blah blah. Within that sentence there might have been links to other papers about 'cardio vascular stress', that being the case that phrase would be underlined and would make up the 'hyper text' or anchor text as it is now known. As we know hypertext is the heart of the Internet as in HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol).

Because of this early methodology whatever the text said was what to expect when you clicked on the link. No rocket science, no black art new method of ranking, it is something that has literally been with us since the dawn of time, Internet time of course .

So there you have it, anchor text is the 'bridge' between anchor and target pages, and it is also meant to be an indication of the subject matter of the target page.

Hope This Helps

Old Welsh Guy

 

Anchor text only make google best rank

 

It's crucial

 

Thank for this posting...I got a lot of information in this thread...

 

Anchor text is very important because it tells the human readers as well as the search engines what sort of information the link contains. So if you are planning to request an inbound link from another website, make sure the webmaster uses the appropriate anchor text to your website. Similarly if you are linking to another website, make sure that use the appropriate anchor text that represents their website

 

btw i thnk the idea of rotating anchor text is overated i notice most of the guys ranking above me have only two variations while i've used far more and in hindsight think it has hurt me.

 

Yes, when you variate your anchor text, it looks more naturally, let's take an example, you have website for perfumes and your main keyword is "perfumes", it wont be very good if "perfumes" is your main keyword, you need to try something like "buy perfumes", "ladies perfumes", "cheap perfumes". You'll get the link juice on the "perfumes" keyword, but you'll also get to some other keywords, which will be useful for long tail rankings

 

The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink.

 

A hyperlink (or link) is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically