how to optimize anchor text within my site

Hi experts, and those who benefits from their knowledge.
I was searching information about how to optimize anchor text within my site, and found two very interesting but a little contradictory articles. The first one, which I would prefer most, said that the keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page pertaining to the keywords used. While the relevance of the page containing the anchor text is also enhanced to some degree (because of relevant keywords appearing on that page), the real gainer is the target page URL.

”The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of my site pages. All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on my pages. In fact Google even has a special operator: ‘allinanchor: keyword', which picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages.”

So their conclusion is:”Search Engine Algorithms like Anchor Text”. The more is the better.

And the second article on Seo Lab.com emphasizes the importance of the internal links’ weight, which I also would understand on some degree.

According to the other professional article, if I will have two inbound links; each is from a PR7 (PageRank 7/10) page. However, one of the links is on a page by itself, while the other is on a page with 300 other links. Although the PageRank of both pages is the same, the Link Weight attached to those links will be dramatically different.

Most websites have some pages that are not converting at all - such as FAQ pages, TOS pages, resource pages, etc. Yet they often link to these pages from every page of the website. Do not waste any link weight on these pages. You can easily use JavaScript - or a number of other solutions - to prevent the link weight from being wasted on these pages.

The method they prefer is to get each, and every page indexed with as few internal links as possible. Once the pages are indexed, you can check the ranking of each page; this will give you some idea of how much link weight will be needed to achieve top ranking for each page.

The next step is to carefully distribute the link weight to those pages which need it the most, while conserving excess link weight on the pages from which it can easily be distributed

Oups, I need a little explanation here. May be because the English is my second language, but I just did not get the two different points, and I got a little confused here.

If I optimized my pages to the first version, I would place as many inbound or internal links on the page (with keywords in them) as I can to those content which relevant to the kaywords. For example: If I wrote an article, and the article contained keywords or phrases, which is related to my other article on my site, it would be beneficiary to make a hyperlink (seen or hidden) to that article because search engines give significant weight to the anchor text on my pages.

But If I were the second seo expert I would place as few internal links as possible. And even wouldn’t waste the weight of my links to pages which does not convert, but instead I would distribute the link weight to those pages which need it the most from a high page ranked page, for example from the home or index page.

I know that inbound hyperlinks and their text will give a little boost on my pages, but if we count link weight and I have 300 inbound link on my page it won’t be so good quality.

So my question is, which is the most important the number of internal links on a page with good keywords in them or just as few as possible but with good weight?

Thank You and I wish all of you the best. Laszlo

You can read the first article on http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20040408AnchorTextOptimization.html

And the second one is http://www.seo-lab.com/seo-articles/internal-link-architecture.php

 

That's a hell of a long question. And the answer in the end is that it does not matter much either way.

Before we go further I suggest you read my PageRank article. However, the reason I say it doesn't matter much is because all your talking about here is increasing your PR values, and almost everyone agrees these days that PR value has little effect on SERP placement. And in the end SERP placement is what we are all chasing.

I think both of these articles you quote are bascally correct. What most people try to do is optimize everything to get their home page highly placed in the SERPs. You do this among other ways by having a link back to your home page -- and this link should contain anchor text -- from every page on the site. However you don't normally have a link from the home page to every page, but rather only to the "category" pages, and these category pages have links to all the pages within the category.

This method automatically achieves some of what the second article is talking about. But as to hiding links to non converting pages like "contact us" or FAQs etc. I find this excessive. How many non converting pages can you have on a site?

 

laszlo,
you are talking about 2 different benefits. A link carries both "anchor text hits" and PageRank. For the anchor text, it won't matter how many other links are on the page. For PR it matters. All links on a page get an equal share of its PR. So more links = less PR, but the same amount of anchor text hits.

 

I think I am starting to get it. I will try to balance out both idea and lets see what happens.
Thanks again and I wish you thousands of hits. (I mean to your sites.)

 

Having good anchor text that is related to your keywords helps but make sure you do not overdo it though otherwise you might get penalized.

 

Great point. I've got a question that maybe you can help me out with, compar. What exactly are the benefits of Page Rank?

 

I find its easier to get people to trade links with you if you have a high pr, it does not do much for the SE of course, but quite a few webmasters still use it as a decision maker when trading links.

 

you can observe how askmen.com do the anchor linking stuff there ...very good and effective.hope it helps

 

Use anchors with text link back to your website when link building.

 

Wow, very old thread rise again.
Use anchor text which very reflects your site. Also make your site's keyword density like the anchor you use

 

i'm also facing same problems but really very nice suggestions
thank you so much